


Seven Minutes of Eternity

by meratrishoslee



Series: Seven Minutes Wherever [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alcohol, Anal Fingering, Anal Play, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Biting, Body Horror, Branding, Canon Compliant, Consent Issues, Dominance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Gender Identity, Gender joy -- we gon' celebrate all sorts of genitals up in here, Genderbending, Genderfluid, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multi, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, Other, Pining, Rough Oral Sex, Scarification, Sexual Inexperience, Submission, Whipping, actual sincere apologies, but like -- not in a fun way, for a blending of both canons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2020-07-29 00:44:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 44,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20073349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meratrishoslee/pseuds/meratrishoslee
Summary: It started with a crack-fic... I am officially the Muse's bitch...This fic is inspired by (in alphabetical order):Literarion-- whose support and gorgeous podfic of my work continues to amaze me  (thank you so much, sweet one!),LuckyRedBalloon-- who was unwise (and perfectly wonderful) enough to ask"What if this author's brain decided to write a story about Aziraphale and Crowley with the intention to destroy the reader instead?"right out where the Muse couldreadit, as if itwouldn'tbring about another X0,000 words of TOO MANY SOMEBODY-DAMNED FEELINGS?  You have only yourself (and maybe me and possibly also the Muse) to blame for what follows here...andwestiec-- who has quickly become my Constant Reader a la Stephen King (and Heaven help them!) ... gurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrl I have lived and died for your comments, so I am back on my bullshit to return the favor once more!  Can't wait to see what you think!  <3I am a fucking sad bitch at tagging shit (ask anyone on my tumblr), so please comment with whatever (standard) tags that you would add to this fiction or would help others of similar interests find it.  If you post non-standard tags that are hilarious, I reserve the right to a) laugh magnificently at your brilliant wit and b) apply them as if I'd thought of them first.  :)





	1. To Which You Can Descend And Still Live

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Literarion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Literarion/gifts), [westiec](https://archiveofourown.org/users/westiec/gifts), [LuckyRedBalloon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyRedBalloon/gifts).

> It started with a crack-fic... I am officially the Muse's bitch...
> 
> This fic is inspired by (in alphabetical order):
> 
> [Literarion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Literarion) \-- whose support and gorgeous podfic of my work continues to amaze me (thank you so much, sweet one!), 
> 
> [LuckyRedBalloon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyRedBalloon) \-- who was unwise (and perfectly wonderful) enough to ask _"What if this author's brain decided to write a story about Aziraphale and Crowley with the intention to destroy the reader instead?"_ right out where the Muse could _read_ it, as if it **wouldn't** bring about another X0,000 words of TOO MANY SOMEBODY-DAMNED FEELINGS? You have only yourself (and maybe me and possibly also the Muse) to blame for what follows here... 
> 
> and [westiec](https://archiveofourown.org/users/westiec) \-- who has quickly become my Constant Reader a la Stephen King (and Heaven help them!) ... gurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrl I have lived and died for your comments, so I am back on my bullshit to return the favor once more! Can't wait to see what you think! <3  
  
I am a fucking sad bitch at tagging shit (ask anyone on my tumblr), so please comment with whatever (standard) tags that you would add to this fiction or would help others of similar interests find it. If you post non-standard tags that are hilarious, I reserve the right to a) laugh magnificently at your brilliant wit and b) apply them as if I'd thought of them first. :)  


**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley enjoyed quite a few things that Aziraphale taught him in their encounters but, as ever the interested and motivated pupil, learned some of the best things on his own.
> 
> He learned a few ways to call down the storms, for example.
> 
> Sure, Crowley'd done a very bad thing.
> 
> After all, he was a demon.

Sure, Crowley'd done a very bad thing.

See, he'd woken his beloved angel with kisses – and whispered "Take a look outside."

Well of course once you get Aziraphale's curiosity moving there was no stopping it. The celestial being had abruptly fluttered up out of the pillows and blankets of Crowley's desert nest... to see the desert surrounding them was no such thing anymore.

White and gold flowers, diamond and topaz as far as the eye could see, held in settings of little green shrubs no higher than one's ankles. A new garden here: in the heart of forbidden love, where only one other Entity should be able to reach them.

Crowley had lain back with his hands clasped loosely behind his head, watching Aziraphale's reaction.

After a moment he'd whipped around to look at his demon, his eyes becoming cerulean storms once more – and Crowley, with impeccable restraint, kept his hips from twitching in delighted anticipation.

"I **told** you She was watching," he'd whispered, and then he was on him again. His hands found Crowley's wrists and pinned them where they were, down to the hand-knotted carpet beneath them.

Let me die like this, Crowley thought in an agony of ecstasy, squirming as Aziraphale's mouth and fingers seemed to be everywhere – teasing and evoking, flirting over the edges of sensation back and forth from over-stimulation into bliss, never staying in one long enough for his demon to become accustomed. Slitted eyes glancing up in the pale dawn light could see where on the angel's flexing shoulder the bite-mark was already healed to slightly-raised pink scars.

He kept his gaze on them even when Aziraphale's lips wrapped around his cock, when his hands found his hips and gripped them, when one freed itself long enough to smack the curve of his disobedient flank.

_Hold still_, said Aziraphale in his head, not bothering to divert his tongue from its current purpose, _or else I will fuck you good and hard_.

Oh, don't throw me in that brer patch! Crowley lay his head back at last and shut his eyes deliriously, his long fingers in those golden lambs-wool locks.

"Fuck!" he exclaimed a moment later, pelvis bucking amidst the pillows, toes curling what felt like a galaxy away. "You keep that up and I'll come."

Now the mouth pulled loose (after one last possessive lick) and said "You'll come when I let you and not one instant sooner," in the calm, icy tone that turned every bone in his body to water.

"Then just... just watch it..."

Fingertips at his ass, opening him with a gentleness that belied the frigid domineering attitude.

"I've 'just watched it' for four years now," the angel growled. "Now I want to do it all, feel it all, taste it all, take it all. And you're going to let me."

"Anything you want, beloved. Anything."

Aziraphale lifted his lower half effortlessly; he brought his knees up to his chest and kept them parted to give his lover access. The angel blocked out the fabric tent roof above them, eyes like the wine-dark seas of old as he focused, penetrating Crowley with his left middle and ring-fingers, steadying him with his right hand gripping his collar bone. The half-moon crescent of his scars glowed faint red.

"Mark me," the demon breathed.

"What?" Distracted, piqued with frustration and lust, those blue orbs turned briefly hurricane-black.

"Mark me... please. Right where your hand is on me, like where I did on you. Wrap your hand in glory and brand me."

Aziraphale's gaze was shocked into the guileless sapphire of an empty summer sky.

"But that would **hurt** you."

"That doesn't bother me," Crowley answered, aware that he'd briefly derailed their lovemaking, not really caring. This was too important. "You quoted the Book of Ruth at me tonight, dinnit you? Yes? That's what humans do when they marry, sometimes. They **vow** that to each other. And they give each other some sort of sign that's supposed to mean something to everyone that sees it. Sometimes rings, sometimes other things.

"Well, any angel or demon looking at you now would see my mark on you. I want yours on me. I want everyone to know I'm yours."

"You're mine," he answered, and all the uncertainty went out of his voice once more.

"Your property," the demon affirmed.

"You want this? Truly?"

Crowley smiled; Aziraphale was torn by its beauty and sweetness.

"I do."

The angel kissed him then, ardently. Had he ever been so eager for a lover before? Of course the games and experiments all had their little charms and sometimes a sense of urgency was one of them – but had he ever **truly** longed for his lover so deeply, yearned to have them even as they were in his grip?  
  
One or two, in their years and for their times. One or two, that he would tell Crowley about when the moment was right. When the angel was ready to speak and the demon was ready to listen.

But none other, Aziraphale knew, that he could yearn after for millennia more and still find completion within every day...

Their bodies came together, fitting like two adjacent puzzle-pieces. Crowley groaned and wriggled at the extraordinary sensation – "Dear Earth, that's so good."  
  
"'Good' as in heavenly good or 'good' as in hellishly bad?" Aziraphale teased.  
  
"Good as in 'us', good."

"Good as _**in**_ _**you**_, _**good!**_" He wrapped his left hand around Crowley's cock and stroked his length from base to tip and back again. Meanwhile, he raised his right hand – and both their stares were drawn to it.

Angels could manifest the glory of God; it was the reason they glowed a pure-white when they felt like it. The strength of the light could be anywhere from comforting to blinding; being in the presence of God's glory was what had caused Moses's face to become so strangely radiant that he'd had to veil himself awhile for the comfort of other humans.

One could describe the glory of God as being some category of radioactive plasmic energy. This description has the benefit of being relatively easy to understand while also entirely incorrect.

Whatever it truly was, Aziraphale's hand blazed with it.

_This really __**will**__ hurt you_, he whispered in his soul, one last time.

_I want it, angel_, his demon insisted.

Aziraphale swirled his fingertips around the ridge of Crowley's erection, friction exciting the nerves.

He pressed his other hand to his lover's left collar-bone, his palm over the top of the pectoral muscle.

Crowley clamped his jaw shut but the rising whine behind his teeth was still audible. It did hurt, it **did **– as much as anything could hurt and not disincorporate him.

But it didn't hurt quite as much as he'd thought it might. He reached up with both hands to grasp Aziraphale's forearm, to hold him there until the glory faded away. Holding him with his gaze, even as his snake-slitted eyes filled with unshed tears.

When at last he pulled back there was a perfect print of his palm and thumb and all four fingers, raised like a burn-mark – but rendered in gold, not the red or black of singed flesh. The scar would remain shimmering golden until the end of time, never fading.

"Oh, my dearest," Aziraphale whispered. "My beautiful love. Look at you."

"Finish us, if you're so minded. Something's gotta give." He was breathing in ragged little gasps, stretched taut between pain and pleasure, exhausted by both.

The angel ran his rounded arm underneath Crowley's back and cradled him, lifting him. Never stopping or slowing his strokes he inhaled deeply of the desert air and blew it back out as cold as an Arctic wind onto the new mark to numb it. The demon's arms came up (he winced as the skin across the left side of his chest rippled at the movement) and wrapped around Aziraphale's shoulders.

"Relax as much as you can and let it happen," he ordered.

He could have gotten him off like a shot – four years of watching had shown him where several of Crowley's hair-triggers were – but knew better than to subject him to yet another intense experience before he'd recovered from the last. The gentle but insistently predictive movement of his hand edged his demon closer and closer to orgasm and for now, at least, Aziraphale was content to let it draw him along into his own.

_Almost like before_, he thought, and smiled.

"Except I can do this," and Crowley reached up to kiss him.

"You're supposed to be relaxing."

"I am relaxing," and the set of his hips grew more fluid, and his shoulders were less braced, and his breathing came faster and shallow, and each of his little kisses across Aziraphale's cheeks and mouth and the point of his nose and the ridge of his brow came at the apex of each thrust of the angel's pelvis that raised him just that tiny amount.

"Yes?" he squeaked breathlessly a minute or so later, and Aziraphale realized with shock and delight that he was asking for permission to come.

Oh Somebody... that is **so** incredibly hot. He rested his forehead against his demon's temple. "Yes, my love!"

Crowley quivered in his arms, arching his neck and crying out as he filled Aziraphale's fist. He let his own orgasm pour out of him into Crowley's body, caught and pulled in by the other's spasms – and the moment they were both clear of the most extreme sensations he gently withdrew and bundled his demon entirely into his embrace, cuddling him onto his chest, exhaling more chilled air onto the hand-print, wrapping the sheet around them both.

"I'm not going to break," scolded the demon lightly even as he fitted his slender frame to the angel's side.

"Never said you were, my dear. Just let me be good to you for a while. **Our** sort of good." He combed his fingers through the short crimson hair.

"So when is it..."

"Hmm?"

"When is it... that I'll get to be inside of you, for once?"

Aziraphale chuckled, as much at the curiosity in Crowley's tone as at the prickles of Lust he felt at the thought – even so soon after spending himself!

"The next time I'm feeling kittenish, I think."

"Kittenish?"

"Oh, you'll recognize it, my dear demon. You may not yet have names for all my moods, but you do know them."

And he did recognize it when he saw it, of course. After six thousand years, what else could he have done?

He'd just finished up a day's worth of programming in his home office – while Heaven and Hell were both technically ignoring them for the foreseeable future, Crowley didn't see any reason to slack off in his work.

And the recent project was very interesting. Turns out if you delay a red traffic light from turning green two or three seconds after the other side has gone red, it makes the intersection safer.

Turns out if you extend that delay into **five** seconds, the intersection is not only exponentially safer but **incredibly irritating** to every vehicle-operator thus affected.

He couldn't wait to tell Aziraphale about it.

So he swaggered up the stairs and into the shop just as it seemed to be clearing for the day (what with some of the the regulars learning how to sense the rhythms of the shop's business hours in the way that small animals respond to the barometric pressure changes that precede an earthquake) – and paused just within the door, utterly arrested by...

Well, by Aziraphale.

Who was sashaying around the aisles as if gliding on air, gently rearranging books, affectionately directing customers... His smile beamed benevolently on everything that came into his line of sight, like early rays of spring sunshine on the best bench in the park – the one by the lake under the shade tree.

"Kittenish," he'd called it. When Crowley had seen him in this frame of mind before, he had mentally labeled it as "ultra-sweetness."  
  
However one might categorize it: it made Crowley's immortal, infernal heart go pitty-pat.

"Hey angel," he purred, stepping into Aziraphale's path, lifting his lover's hand to his lips to press a kiss to the back of it. "Got plans for the night?"

"Oh, I don't know! I could go for just about anything right now... what about you, my dear?"  
  
"Oh, me – I have **definite** plans for what I want to do." His gaze over the tops of his sunglasses was direct, traveling down and back up Aziraphale's body, making him blush.

"Oh you, indeed! Dinner first?"

And he fluttered coquettishly, batting his big blue eyes. The demon felt his internal motor revving: the ultra-sweetness, his Aziraphale's true sweetness, just as real as that darker side of him and almost as rarely shown, never ever got old.

"_Age cannot wither him, nor custom stale his infinite variety..."_

"Dinner at the Ritz... dessert back at my place," Crowley growled through his grin. Aziraphale giggled.

There was just something about it, this kittenish manner – it had an innocence in it, even though it utterly lacked naivety. It bore a vulnerability that without fail aroused Crowley's strength with the urge to protect it, to shelter it...

(to possess it? asked his heart, a bit smugly – to ravish it?)

Long significant glances throughout dinner; when Crowley's wineglass was temporarily emptied (a shocking oversight by the staff, remedied only a moment or two later) he sipped from Aziraphale's, fitting his mouth to the mark his angel's had left.

When the waiter brought the piece of devil's food cake on its delicate plate with its elegant little dessert fork, Crowley moved it from Aziraphale's space to in front of himself. Aziraphale pouted until the demon cut a tiny morsel from it and guided the fork to the angel's lips – which parted obediently to receive it.

"Crowley!" he protested quietly, the tip of his tongue darting over his bottom lip followed by his primly folded linen napkin. "People are watching! People will **see**!"

The crimson-haired demon made another cut with the silver fork, shaping another bite. He arched one brow and smirked at his lover as he offered it. "Let them see."

Let me die like this, Crowley thought, conveying each dark sweet tidbit to Aziraphale's yielding mouth. Watching the blush light the tops of his cheekbones, self-consciousness born half of embarrassment and half of arousal. Watching his lashes veil eyes bright with lust. Watching him lick the last of the icing from the fork tines...

Crowley let the Bentley drive them home, one hand lightly on the wheel; the other arm was around the shoulders of the beautiful man snuggled against him.

They kissed for long languid minutes against the car door under the moonlight, making quite a spectacle of themselves for anyone who cared to glance their way.

(The Bentley, who had viewed their various shenanigans, adventures, scrapes, and pinings for the last ninety-five years with an indulgent eye – headlight – **something**, thought to itself it was about damned time.)

They made their way up the stairwell of Crowley's building, holding hands, pausing from time to time for more kisses. Aziraphale gasped when Crowley pinned him against the wall with his body at one point, like he'd never had that done to him before (when Crowley knew he'd at least had it done to him in a bar's broom-closet, if somehow not ever previously) – and the demon thought he might just lose his mind in the best possible way.[1]

They moved through the apartment by inches, as if they had all eternity to do so, shedding each other's clothing step by step. Naked, curvy, glorious seraph, gradually revealed like the dawn rising above distant mountains. Crowley kissed the raised marks of his bite in Aziraphale's flesh as he pulled them both into his pocket dimension, dropping them directly into his nest.

Aziraphale writhed below him, the blush having spread down his throat and to the top of his chest. The night was as sweet and cool as his lover was, and this time he took his time and ravished all of him, the way he'd always wanted. Aziraphale's sweet blue glances, piquing his ardor, kept inviting him onward. Aziraphale's little gasps and cries told him how much he was enjoying the specific attentions.

Then after that blissful journey he was on him at last, inside him, gripped deliciously to the hilt as Aziraphale wrapped his legs around his sleek hips.

"Yes, my love – yes!"

"Is this – like this – good for you too?"

Kisses in the half-darkness; he essayed a slow deep thrust and the angel moaned.

"It's perfect, dearest. You're perfect. Do it like you want it – you'll take us both there."

Crowley felt the bond between them – never entirely empty or silent – deepen like the edge of a continental shelf undersea, filled with the both of them, their arousal and ardor.

And love... always love...

He took his time.

He took them both there.

And when they arrived, it was bliss.

The days were so good, being in love. The nights were as good or better. They parted in the mornings, only the better to enjoy their reunions in the afternoons. They played at their jobs. They strolled in the park and had dinner. They went to musicals and plays and the opera and the symphony.

Days and nights passed, and even though they wrangled as they had in the past their association never lost its savor – nor did that most intimate of interactions, learning each other one second at a time.

Crowley enjoyed quite a few things that Aziraphale taught him in their encounters but, as ever the interested and motivated pupil, learned some of the best things on his own.

He learned a few ways to call down the storms, for example.

Sure, Crowley'd done a very bad thing.

After all, he **was** a demon.

This particular evening he was curled up on the couch in Aziraphale's shop, waiting for him to finish some minor administrative tasks at his desk. His feet were tucked beneath him (his shoes on the floor beside the couch – he was a demon, not a savage) and the daily paper was spread in his long slender fingers.

"I can't believe this stuff about Victor Hugo," he marveled aloud.

There was nothing about Hugo on the page; an onlooker might have noticed it was the financial section.

"Mmm?" answered Aziraphale.

"Yes – apparently he had a lot of sex. Just oodles of it."

"Huh," said the angel, his tone flat.  
  
"Official mistresses, **un**official mistresses --" Crowley continued airily. "Fucking a dozen times a day and keeping a sex diary about it. His biographers basically gave up trying to list and identify all his lovers. Says here that when he died, all the brothels of Paris closed for the day so that the whores could mourn him."  
  
The silence in the shop was practically palpable.

"Did you happen to know him?"  
  
Aziraphale turned slowly in his chair to give him a significant stare through darkening eyes.

"I'm fairly sure he preferred women."  
  
"I didn't ask if you **fucked** him, angel – I asked if you **knew** him." He was careful to keep that mildly amused, nothing-of-true-import expression on his face. Just reading the evening fish-wrapper. Just sharing an interesting article.

A few very busy seconds later and the paper was crumpled on the floor, Crowley's glasses were flung off somewhere in the vicinity of the historical non-fiction, his trousers were shoved to his ankles and his hair clenched in one of Aziraphale's fists.

How'd we wind up here?!  
  
Oh yes, something about "giving his smart mouth something better to do." He cracked his jaw on either side, humming with satisfaction. Aziraphale's other hand was claiming his cock and the evening's bill-paying had been quite forgotten.

The demon let himself go all but limp (well, generally speaking) under Aziraphale's control, worshiping the angel's own thick prick until it was hot and hard, feeling his own arousal grow at the just-rough-enough handling it was being given.

Then he was draped over the arm of the couch and his lover was penetrating him with a low growl of pleasure; each punishing thrust frotted Crowley's erection against upholstery gone slick and silky with age and wear.

Probably not wear of **this** type; then again, Crowley'd never asked...

There wasn't a choice about where or how he was going to come, and he knew it – it was only a matter of time at this point.

"Aziraphale," he choked, reaching down to grip the carved wooden couch-legs for dear existence, "someone could – could try to --" _Attack us right now_, is how he finally had to finish through the bond, his smart mouth refusing to obey his brain in favor of uttering sharp panting cries.

"Let them **just** **try** it," said the coldest of cold voices from behind him, radiating a confident and destructive power that obliterated any remaining conscious thought in Crowley's mind. His angel's fingertips dug into his collar-bones, touching the top of his scars that glowed softly golden in the dusk.

When the demon orgasmed his own pulse roared in his ears and colors flashed in front of his eyes, narrowing his field of vision down to pinpricks that were then swallowed in black.

… so that's what it's like to pass out, he thought groggily some minutes later.

They were in Aziraphale's bed-nest, high up in the loft of his little personal quarters at the back of the shop. His beloved angel, with the uncanny physical strength he possessed and was careful to only rarely display, must have carried him all the way back here and up the ladder into the sheltered space, then stripped him bare. Crowley now lay cradled bodily on top of Aziraphale, his head pillowed on his chest.

The manicured hand that had been gently stroking his cheek and temple moved out of view – then back in, carrying a small glass of water. "You'll feel better if you drink a bit, I think."  
  
"Water? Ugh. Water is for **plants**. Fish pee in this, you know."

The seraph chuckled, and Crowley sipped a mouthful of it anyway. Then he handed it back and settled his ear against Aziraphale's chest again, listening to a heartbeat that was steady and slow and contented.

He would have torn anyone apart, had they tried anything just then. I was safe... we were safe. He wouldn't have let anyone hurt either of us.

Might have been a bit amusing, to watch him obliterate some angel or demon – only to come back and finish me off without losing his hard-on.

Let me die like this, Crowley thought in wonder for what must be the thousandth time, wrapped around Aziraphale's body, being caressed lovingly by his hands.

That wasn't really the content of his feeling, of course – angels and demons are immortal, outside of a few specific circumstances. The concept that kept repeating in his soul actually should be translated something more like: "If my existence is brought to an end and I cease to be as an individual sentient being, please allow my last instants of cogent understanding to contain this amount of pleasure and happiness and serenity."

Which is a perfectly reasonable desire.

But most of us don't get to choose how we die or how we end, do we?

* * *

1 [It wasn't, of course, that Aziraphale had never had that done to him before.

Many of his games over the years had gone that way; for some reason - a reason, given the way he usually presented amongst the humans, not all that mysterious if he thought about it, but he disliked that sort of judgment by appearances, so he didn't - several of his lovers had assumed he would be the one to be pinned, rather than the one doing the pinning.

It wasn't even that Crowley had never pinned him against a wall. There was, most memorably, a certain occasion in a bar's broom closet, and another, more recently, in the halls of a former satanic convent, much to the amusement of one former sister-cum-retreat director. But those were fear and short temper and impulse and nothing like now.

No, what was new now was that it was Crowley, who knew him backwards and forwards and always matched him exactly where he was, crowding him up into the wall with intent. Crowley, pinning him down simply for the sheer thrill of it. Crowley, so often soft and sinuous and sweetly submissive, striking instead, like a serpent when it has spotted a mouse.

Or a kitten. Aziraphale, for his part, let out a soft breathy cry, pleased.

(This footnote provided by [westiec](https://archiveofourown.org/users/westiec/pseuds/westiec) on [this comment](https://archiveofourown.org/comments/242304076) \-- thank you so much!)]  [ return to text ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "To Which You Can Descend And Still Live" is part of a quote from Pliny the Elder: "The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach."
> 
> Going by that, I should be able to touch the stratosphere. And our dear boys have their own dark paths to follow...
> 
> Buckle up, my darlings -- shit is about to get heavy.


	2. All The Love I Need To Keep My Faith Alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the end Crowley disengaged with a sense of self-preservation – it was withdraw from Aziraphale or be destroyed. He rolled a hands-breadth from his lover's body and gazed up at the tent ceiling, undone.
> 
> “What... on Earth... was that... all about?”
> 
> “A few personal benefits, as I had said,” came the bare whisper of a reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to thank [emmalinerosette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmalinerosette) for their reminder that Billy Joel's "It's All About Soul" is absolutely another Aziraphale and Crowley song and, since I'm trying to choose chapter titles with an eye towards wrecking my readers, I thought I'd honor that comment with this chapter's title. Thank you emmalinerosette!
> 
> So in this chapter again, a disclaimer: I am a cisgender individual myself, and in this work I am not speaking about a human transgender experience of any type. I'm talking about two immortal creatures who happen to have the ability to choose any spectrum of gender (or all or none) basically at whim. So they play with it as a means of exploring new facets of themselves and each other.
> 
> I always try to remain respectful, however. There's some pronoun talk and after that I _generally_ match pronouns to genitals just to keep things simpler for me as a writer and for You the Reader. Again, this is not a commentary on the human experience. While human it is possible to have any types of genitals and any pronouns.
> 
> I've tried to spray tags all over this so everyone's updated as to whatever relevant items may happen in this chapter, but consider this an additional "content consideration" alert and moderate your own reading experience please.

"I saw your paper, my dear," chided the angel. "It was open to the stock-market updates. Care to explain how Victor Hugo was relevant to your reading this evening?"

Crowley's tongue made a transit of his lips. There was a fair amount of lip and a lot of tongue, so this took a moment.

"At some point not too long after you and I were locked in a closet together, I thought it wise to see how many first editions you had that were signed... and by whom."

Aziraphale studied him speculatively for several seconds. "You manipulated me."

"I **am** still a demon, beloved."

"Well – when you want that sort of encounter, you could just ask."

"Could I? Could I really?!" Crowley raised up on on his elbow, the better to track his lover's expressions. "I could just say to you: Hey angel – I want you to unleash that side of you, the side that so thrills me even as it concerns and upsets you. I want you to become that glorious, dangerous creature... and I want you to throw me down on the couch, tear my clothes apart, use my mouth like you own it then fuck me like I'm your toy. Just some **thing** that exists solely for your pleasure. And you'd do it?"

The soft silence stretched, serving as its own answer.

"No," he confirmed at last with a sigh. "No, I couldn't do it."

"You can't do it **yet**," corrected Crowley affectionately, "but I think someday you might. Someday when you've grown accustomed to the idea that when I love you, I love all of you. Your light and your dark sides, and every shade in between."

"How?" Aziraphale's voice was tinged with both disbelief and self-loathing. His demon stretched up to kiss his cheek.

"When I asked questions in Heaven, uncomfortable questions that my superiors and peers didn't want to answer – or even face for themselves – they cast me out. When I ask **you** uncomfortable questions..." and here he grinned like a Cheshire cat, "I get my brains fucked out of me in a way I quite enjoy. And then I get carried to bed and snuggled and given glasses of water and doted on very nicely."

"Point taken." His hand went back to stroking the hair at Crowley's temple, fingertips caressing over the little serpent tattoo at his right cheek.

"Talk to me, about what upsets you regarding Victor Hugo. You've got various versions of 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' out there in the stacks but your signed first edition is locked up in here. It's not even on display with some of your others."  
  
"How do you know he upsets me?"  
  
Crowley caught the fidgeting hand and kissed the backs of its fingers. "Because if he didn't, you would have laughed and told me all the gossip about him instead of... well..." And his hips shimmied back and forth, matching the satisfaction of his grin.

Aziraphale did laugh a bit then, twining their fingers together and laying their hands on his chest, and that was alright.

"I had heard about Hugo at the time. **Everyone** had heard about Hugo. A few years before I met him he'd written 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' and it was incredibly popular. It's the reason they fixed up the old building, you know. What a clever little book, so ahead of its era. 'Ceci tuera cela,' as Frollo shakes a printed book at the hulking mass of the cathedral. I've often wondered what Hugo would have thought of twentieth century architecture," he said. "Or the twentieth century, period.

"A man with that sort of literary prowess who was also, well, a bit of a slut himself... I was intrigued." He exhaled hard through his nose: a snort at his own foibles.

"But he was firmly in the heterosexual side of things, so I put on the old female self, you know. Tried it out a couple of places to make sure I hadn't lost the hang of it. Then I presented myself to him as a fan, with my own first edition copy that I wanted signed. And of course he invited me to take tea with him... in a private room above a cafe."

Aziraphale sighed.

"'Asira,' he said. 'That's a pretty name. A pretty name for a pretty girl.' And... well... I don't have any complaints; he was perfectly nice and quite handsome... it's just that... well... it felt like tea. Or dinner. Something you do, and it feels good, and then you set your knife and fork down on the plate and push it away and clean up with a napkin and go on to other things."

"You mean," Crowley corrected quietly, "that for the first time in your games you felt like the **dinner**, instead of the _**diner**_."

He felt his angel struggle with his emotions again; eventually they smoothed.

"It wasn't quite the first time... but it was certainly the most severe example. 'Anything for a fan,' he said, and patted me on the bottom, handed me back my book, showed me the door. Ages later they publish his secret journals where he wrote in code about all his encounters – and I look up the afternoon I was with him and..."  
  
"And?"  
  
"Nothing special. Nothing out of the ordinary. Same sort of codes as any other girl he'd had."

And that ground his gears something terrible, Crowley thought.

"At least I tried to make sure each lover felt special... to make sure that they went away not believing that I thought of them as just part of the queue."

"I've never seen you presenting as a girl," the demon said, instead of anything else he might have said.

"Hardly anyone has. It's so much more difficult, being a woman. I mean there are a few benefits, personally – but out in society? My patience would be tested hourly."  
  
"I want to see, angel."

Aziraphale blinked. "Okay, but let's go back to your place."

Crowley laughed aloud, tugging him through the dimensions back into his bed-nest – "Feeling a bit vulnerable, are we?"  
  
"It's a vulnerable thing to be, and I want to do it where only you can see."

The demon raised the lights to nearly dawn levels, although stars still shimmered in the deep well of sky directly above the tent. Aziraphale pushed up out of the pillows, standing naked on the overlapping carpets – each one of them a piece of someone's time, a labor of hours. A labor of love, in many cases. Crowley had not manifested any of them but had bought each one directly from their makers and brought them here himself.

Now the angel's rosy toes curled anxiously against the knotted surfaces; mortal's love and demon's love meeting in a world that didn't really exist. "Shut your eyes."  
  
"Are you **serious**?"  
  
"Entirely so!" One celestial foot stomped imperatively. "There's a certain bit of... discombobulation in the between state. It just feels unwieldy, and I want some privacy while I do it."

Crowley sighed and covered his eyes with both hands obediently. There was no sound but the soft breath of wind that rustled the leaves of the little plants with gold and ivory flowers.

"Okay. You can look now."  
  
The demon raised up on his elbows and opened his snake-slitted eyes.

"... oh.. agghh... wazagfl. Wow."

The figure standing on the carpets was so familiar and yet so different. He – she? – was so curvy, even more so than before. At least a dozen new curves all around.

(Although Crowley had never been attracted to mortal women before, as a serpentine being he quite supported and appreciated their aesthetic.)

Aziraphale's hair was long and golden-wavy, and fell to the tops of his (her?) plush thighs. The resemblance finally clicked in Crowley's art-lover mind.

"Botticelli's Venus," he murmured.

Aziraphale blushed prettily. "Oh, you!"

The demon was on his feet immediately, aware that Aziraphale's gaze was at least several centimeters lower now, looking up at him from the vicinity of his collar-bones and oh... ohh...

"Which, uh... pronouns should I? Now?" His brain was short-circuiting but the question was very important.

"Oh! When I look like this, 'she' and 'her' are just fine."  
  
"Okay. Okay – great. So now..." He took a deep breath. "Show me. How to."

"Crowley?"

His name sounded wonderful in her mouth – Old Aziraphale and yet New Aziraphale. He plunged onward.  
  
"See I'd never wanted to, before. With a. And I've had a cock and I've... kinda learned what to do with it and with, uh, your cock? But this. It. It's." He was aware of himself as a tall lanky angular thing, standing before the beautiful ocean waves of all these shifting curves...  
  
"Oh my." Aziraphale took Crowley's limp hands in her own. Such tiny little hands. The demon thought of where they could go and what they could do, and how they would feel. Then he couldn't think much at all.

"It's," Crowley tried again.

Her voice was quiet and lilting. "Would you like for me to show you, how to make love to a woman?"

This was instantly more certain ground. "No. With you."  
  
"To make love to **me**, when I look like this?"  
  
Fantastic! We'd gotten there eventually. He swallowed hard and nodded.

The huge sapphire eyes took in the tent, the single hanging oil-lamp, the blooming desert, the night that closed in around them. "This is so familiar," she laughed in delight. "All I'd need is a veil. Funny how things come back around, in time."

Crowley miracled her a gauzy length of embroidered fabric, blue to match her eyes. She swirled it around her in an amazingly graceful movement, then took the demon by the hand and led him back to the nest of pillows, settling down into it.

"Kiss me, for starters. That's always about the same, I think."

But it wasn't, quite. Her mouth and tongue were smaller, the taste of them sweeter. She still made similar noises when he kissed down her throat.

She took one of his hands and guided it to her breast – that was certainly different. While Aziraphale's usual barrel-chest was fulsome in several dimensions, this aspect was nothing like its male presentation.

He discovered the usefulness of the shape when he bent to suck at the nipple: now his nose wasn't mashed up against the pectoral in order to get it between his lips. It was much easier to breathe. When he pressed the points of his teeth gently against it, he heard the dulcet voice of his lover swear like a sailor.

"No, it's good, it's good," Aziraphale answered the concerned glance, and exhaled hard. "I'd just forgotten how intense everything was."

He played for quite a while with his angel's chest, both mystified and aroused by this strangeness.

"Crowley, I want you to touch me. Further down," he panted.

"I'm gonna need some--"

"I know; we'll go slow. Just move to where you can look at me."

The demon sat back cross-legged; Aziraphale pushed a couple of pillows under her hindquarters and laid back. Now the spread of her thighs was raised for Crowley's view.

Instead of the usual fairly straightforward (or so he believed) setup, there was instead a little mound covered by golden curls just a bit darker than what grew on Aziraphale's head. The mound had a slit running from its peak down toward the space between her buttocks.

"Wet your fingers in your mouth and spread me open gently, right there."

Crowley did as instructed; Aziraphale's hips moved instinctively despite his care.

The parts thus revealed were deepening shades of pink, like the inside of a conch shell perhaps. There were different dewy layers seeming to lead into some secret place.

"The part at the very top of the opening is the visible part of my clitoris, in its little hood. Imagine if just the tip of your penis stuck out from your body at all – but it had a few thousand more nerves in it. The rest of my clitoris stays inside my body all the time; it has two lobes that pass on either side of my vagina."  
  
"And human women are like that too?"

"Yes, but they only discovered that around three or four decades ago. Before all that, people thought that the little visible part of the clitoris was all that women had."

Hmmm. As if it was the head of a penis, with a little hood like its own foreskin.

Crowley had seen heterosexual porn; ninety-nine times out of a hundred it didn't look all that fun for the female-shaped person involved, for all that they could fake it fairly well. But he was fairly solid on what to do with Aziraphale's regular penis and if this version was smaller (the initially accessible part, at least) he would merely have to get inventive.

He extended his tongue to its full length and assayed a gentle lick that circled the little bud being discussed; it seemed to swell and peek out at the attention. Then he rolled his tongue into his mouth and his sinuses lit up with the new taste/scent – like Aziraphale's ejaculate but thinner, silkier, more honeyed.

The angel, meanwhile, was laying in the pillows with her head thrown back. "Fuck," she said.

Then she looked up and – had her eyes gotten darker?

"Do that some more."

Crowley spread his lips in a grin and, still holding her gaze, licked her clit again – this time in a swirl that did not stop.

"Ooooooooh, fuck!" the angel moaned.

After a moment of this treatment the instructions continued.

"Take your right hand," she managed breathlessly, "first two fingers; stroke a bit down from my clit and you'll find my – oooh, God yes, **fuck** – just the tips there for a moment and then curl them up towards ohhh fuck _**yes**_ right there. Keep doing that thing with your tongue."

He snuggled in closer, the pads of his fingers rubbing that little swollen patch inside Aziraphale, about where he figured the angel's prostate would normally be. Meanwhile now that he'd closed some distance he was able to apply both his tongue and lips to her clit. He thanked whatever Somebody responsible for his beak of a nose; although his nostrils were tickled by her pubic hair he was able to breathe quite readily as he suckled at her.

Ohhhh, Aziraphale was definitely more vocal like this and Crowley was loving it – the angel blessed, swore, cursed, blasphemed, and cried out as Crowley continued to do whatever seemed to get the best response. Her two little hands caught in his dark red hair and held him where he was; her thighs quivered against his shoulders.

If God was listening, he thought wryly, She was certainly getting an earful.

"Fuck – I'm gonna **come** I'm gonna --" and the sleek tunnel within her clenched around his digits, spreading wetness into his palm. Aziraphale's hips thrust in spasms; Crowley slowed his caress of mouth and hand but did not yet withdraw. His lover could get sensitive right after he'd orgasmed, and usually liked to get his wind back before –

The fists knotted against his scalp were urging him up desperately. "Fuck, God yes, Crowley – I need you."

Shocked and delighted (and utterly thrilled that he hadn't lost his erection during all this scientific inquiry), the demon followed the barely-verbal prompting, letting his cock seek the space his fingers had been... ohhhhhhhhh...

And it was gloriously warm and slick and tight – being inside Aziraphale, back again within the body of his beloved, new and old and new once more, first experienced yet somehow well-loved.

"I want to come," he groaned; even overwhelmed by new sensation he knew to be polite.

"Then come!" she gasped.

He wound his arms around her curves and constricted, just as she somehow did the same with the space between her thighs, her cavern gripping his cock, shifting and relaxing and tightening again, pulling him in.

Crowley cried out "God!" and felt his orgasm pulse into her and she was coming again, hands eager down the center of his back and to the top of his ass, as if she would have pulled him bodily into her if she could.

"Ohhhh... God... Somebody... That's so gooooooood – Darling – your thumb, my clit --"

He understood and, as soon as the initial lassitude had passed, he was teasing that little erection mercilessly with just the side of one thumb. Aziraphale's inner grip tightened again.

"You can – this quick?"

"If you stay hard... and keep doing that? Until we're both exhausted," the angel said, her gaze needy and wicked. "And I want to!"

He thrust deep and it was right; it kindled her again until he pulled back against her grip and then she screamed in pleasure so shocking that it edged along pain, blending in intensity.

It was only the start.

He took her, and she took him, until they were both absolutely drained.

At the end Crowley disengaged with a sense of self-preservation – it was withdraw from Aziraphale or be destroyed. He rolled a hands-breadth from his lover's body and gazed up at the tent ceiling, undone.

"What... on Earth... was that... all about?"

"A few personal benefits, as I had said," came the bare whisper of a reply.

Crowley became aware that he'd had a full day's work, a serious fucking, and a few minutes' unconsciousness before this latest intense experience. He miracled them a bottle of chilled wine, with the cork already pulled. He let his second cold mouthful sit awhile on his tongue as he passed it to Aziraphale.

"Thank you, dearest."

"Is it always like that... that intense?"

"Oh dear Somebody, no! Only when it's good. Sometimes it can be completely awful. Just depends on your mindset and your partner... and any number of things, really."

She moved her body into the space against his, curling up with her head on his chest, her cheek pressed to the golden palm-print. She set the bottle back into his free hand.

"I didn't know you liked women," Aziraphale murmured. Crowley heard what was said, and what was unsaid. His arm around the angel embraced her, squeezing her with infinite adoration.

"I like **you**, Aziraphale," he stressed carefully. "I like my beloved angel, in whatever shape he or she or they may be. You could be a blue whale angel, and I would want to be a blue whale demon and swim along beside you in the deeps. We could be two lions in the Serengeti, two sparrows in New York, or two lizards in the Amazon. Or you could be a little flea, running a little flea book shop on a dog's bottom – and I'd want to be an incredibly cool little flea driving a little flea vintage luxury car to come by and take you to the flea opera."

The angel giggled at the image, and gradually the tension dissolved out of her frame.

"I think the power of my response to your current look is... that after six thousand years you **think** you know someone entirely, and then they show you a new facet of themselves and you fall in love with them all over again. It's not because it's a female facet – it's because it's a freshly revealed one.

"It doesn't matter what you look like, what gender you are. I like whatever, **whoever** you are because it's **you,** beloved."

This seemed to settle the matter happily – and in fact Crowley was beginning to drowse off, waking up just enough to wonder if he should miracle a cork for the bottle or simply send it back to the void from which it was produced – when Aziraphale whispered "Next time I'd love to be on top for a while."

There was a fairly loud **pop**, the sound that a lot of air makes when displaced at once, and now Aziraphale was cuddled up to thirteen meters of red and black serpent. The angel gasped in some dismay.

"Is this your version of a safeword, then?"

"I am **tired!**" declared the massive snoot as Crowley coiled himself beneath the pale body of his lover, lifting her onto his lengthy back effortlessly. "I need at least a full-night's sleep before we try any more... things... or else I **swear** you will disincorporate me."

"All you had to do was say," answered Aziraphale primly. She relaxed in the center of the snake-circle, her head now pillowed on the flat top of his. He enjoyed the warmth that radiated from the angel's body, in comparison to his current shape. Like a little blonde space-heater.

He regretted the need for a delay in events, although he seriously did require rest. Still, his instinct was always to put the cat among the pigeons...

"Just FYI," he hissed after a moment, "in this body I can have _**TWO**_ penises."

The girl-form managed a very presentable Aziraphale-chortle. "'Never have I ever' considered bestiality before..."

And both of them dissolved into laughter that lasted several minutes. Every time they began to settle down again one or the other would snicker and it'd start all over again.

When Crowley at last slept, it was with the hint of a smile on his snout.

He woke, and Aziraphale had reverted to his regular body at some point during their nap – which was fine by him. The better to hold him, to wake him with more kisses.

In the days to follow, the angel's mutable gender was a spice they explored. Never without some warning – Aziraphale was good about checking with Crowley through the bond, testing his mood before each day's reunion. Sometimes the demon just wanted something he could easily understand; sex or not, the cuddling was straightforward, with every dimension of his beloved memorized centuries ago.

And sometimes he was up for a bit of a challenge.

Having her on top was exciting; her breasts bounced fetchingly and his fingers had no barriers to her clitoris. She would clench those inner muscles for the fun of it – in sequence moving deeper, or left then right, alternating – and it was a specific incredible feeling on Crowley's cock.

It was also wonderful (if initially perplexing) to be so much larger than his lover. While he was a bit taller in any case, Aziraphale's female form was small enough to pique him. Bend farther to kiss – reach farther to touch....

A month or so later, Aziraphale got the idea that Crowley should try being female too.

The demon didn't say no. He instinctively knew that a "no" voiced aloud on something like this would be considered a hard boundary, and never transgressed again. And it wasn't a hard boundary sort of thing... he just needed to think about it a while.

That's all.

"But I've **seen** you present as female," coaxed the angel.

"Actually, you've just seen me **dress** as female. It's called 'fashion', beloved. Nobody on this planet or in either Host was checking between my legs to see what did or did not dangle there."

Aziraphale stared at him for a long moment. "It'll just be me who sees you," he said at last.

Not "do it for me," because Crowley would have done it. Not "I want it," because Crowley would have given it to him.

"It'll just be me who sees you" … so that he could decide all on his own.

And in the end, he decided to try.

"All right, so first, just let go of who you believe yourself to be – as a gender."

Right. Very helpful.

"Maybe like a Ken doll?"

Crowley rolled his eyes and dismissed his genitals.

"Okay, sure," said Aziraphale, cheerleading. The angel was female for the moment in a display of solidarity. "So now some breasts."  
  
"I do like breasts," Crowley admitted, and permitted some modest bosom to occur on his (their?) chest.

"Oh, they're lovely, darling! Now, just for the quim."

"Is that what we're calling it, the whole setup down below?"  
  
"Well, a lot of the various terms for it were chosen by human men and they were mostly shit at it – so yes. Don't you like 'quim'? It sounds rather nice, I think. Like 'trim', but a bit queer."

Aziraphale got down on her knees, to study Crowley's quim-manifestation. Crowley grew out her head-hair to shoulder-length while the angel was distracted.

The angel poked at her genital mound. "Do you really want your outer lips to be so... small?"  
  
"That's just how they are."  
  
"But my outer labia are bigger, so that they cover my inner labia."  
  
"That's just how **you** are."

"But --"

"Let me be who I am, please," Crowley pled – and Aziraphale took a good look up at her face for the first time.

"Oh," she said. "Oh my God."

"What? It's not like my nose is on upside down.... er, it isn't, is it?"  
  
"No, it's just that – I get what you meant now. About falling in love all over again. Oh... oh, Crowley..."

"It's awful, I know. Just let me change back."

"No, I didn't say that, not at all. _**Please**_... just wait a few moments. I want to put your hair up – and get you a proper dress."

Aziraphale miracled up a chair and bade her demon sit in it; for at least half an hour intense and mysterious things were happening to her scalp that the angel didn't let her see.

Then she manifested a dress, and helped Crowley into the complication of steel and whalebone corset integrated into its frame.

"And the table," she murmured, pushing a bundle of the dress's train into Crowley's hand.

"What the entire Earth is happening?!"  
  
"You'll understand just as soon as you see it. I've just got to get it just right." The angel was muttering to herself and Crowley shuddered in long-suppressed irritation.

Aziraphale posed her with the manifested oval occasional table (even more occasional than usual, since it had burst into Crowley's pocket-dimension with a feeling of surprise that it existed whatsoever), then stepped back.

"Okay... look off toward your left."

Crowley sighed and did as instructed. Aziraphale backed up several paces.

"Perfect, my dearest. Now, without moving your head at all, _**look through my eyes.**_"

Crowley did so.

"Oh," she croaked. "Oh my Somebody."

"Do you see it? You're so lovely!" Aziraphale practically danced with glee.

Crowley drew herself up, seeing the change through Aziraphale's gaze – the angel had styled, dressed, and positioned her the same as the magnificently proud and pale woman in John Singer Sargent's "Portrait of Madame X."

Crowley turned her head in the mirror of Aziraphale's eyes. She was tall and her face was long and so was her nose and every single angle was sharp – and she was beautiful.

"Yes you are," Aziraphale agreed, enfolding her in her arms.

It was enough for that night; Crowley had a lot to think about.

He thought about it for at least a month. Aziraphale said nothing. Life continued as it had.

Then one night, Crowley dressed herself the same way. Powder all the way down to her deep decolletage, covering but not quite hiding the glory burn-scar, and her hair pulled up in a coiffure.

Aziraphale leaned his curvy frame against the doorway and watched.

"Call a cab," said the magnificent creature at the makeup table, staring into her own golden eyes in the mirror, "and take us to the Ritz."

Aziraphale scheduled a cab for thirty minutes hence – and quickly donned a black suit to match.

Crowley was an incredible tower of a woman, so striking that she turned every head while on Aziraphale's arm. Male and female gaze traveled her body, from the top of her sunset hair to the bottom of her snake-skin stiletto heels. The waiters and staff, having known Aziraphale from long acquaintance (and having seen a male Crowley wearing sunglasses with him every time), whispered and muttered in the kitchen and side passages.

Crowley sat at the immaculate linen table in the chair pulled out for her – and ate little, and drank much. The whole room seemed to exhale around her.

Aziraphale's eyes were the black-blue of a fresh bruise and his smile was so incredibly tender, throughout the five course meal he devoured.

For dessert he fed her, one tiny spoonful at a time, a sherbet that was less than ten cubic centimeters in volume. He had not a single bite for himself.

They didn't make it to the tent in the blooming desert.

They barely made it to the floor of Crowley's flat, near the massive desk and throne-like chair.

Without a word Aziraphale had her, twitching and trembling. Only the constant presence in the bond, saturated with overwhelming and eternal love, held Crowley steady.

Arousal was different. Orgasms were different – stronger, and more of them. But harder to reach, harder won.

Later on when he'd re-assumed his preferred form, Crowley realized that Aziraphale had been so incredibly gentle, his maleness to her femaleness. More gentle than he'd ever been before.

It reminded him of the joke about the masochist and the sadist marriage, having decided not to "play" until their wedding night. On said night, finally alone in their honeymoon suite, the masochist begged "Whip me, beat me!" And the sadist answered: "No, my love – I will not."

It was all... very complex.

But Crowley felt like he might eventually incorporate this form and its experiences into his existence, even if it took centuries. Even if it took a thousand years.

As long as he had the time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Aziraphale, while he has both read and seen 'Les Miserables' (and enjoyed both), did not bother to seek out Hugo again to get a signed first edition of it. Hmm.
> 
> * Crowley's better at spotting fake orgasms than most mortals. This explains his difficulty with mainstream straight pornography.
> 
> * I tried to keep this chapter from being an entire anatomy lesson... but I really like how so much of the physical "changes" between a male-ish and a female-ish set of genitalia are really just slightly modifying existing structures and reorienting them. Someday it'll be common knowledge all around the mortal universe that we're all on spectrums of our own, and we're all human, and we're all acceptable and worthy of love.
> 
> * Also gotta love how Aziraphale sets up an experience that ALSO winds up making him uncertain. We stan one neurotic emotionally constipated angel.
> 
> * 'Never have I ever', for those who haven't experienced it, is a drinking game you play with people you have previously pretended to like, where you say 'Never have I ever' and some shocking following statement, usually of a sexual nature. And anyone who cannot truthfully say 'Never have I ever' must then take a drink. It's a good way to learn way too much about people by accident.
> 
> * As for vaginal muscle clenching, well. Kegels have been a thing for me for like 20ish years now, but reading some of Kim Anami's posts introduced some new concepts that have worked out quite well. Not that I'm advocating for the sale of $300 glass dildos and crystal water (well, not on AO3 and not without a commission, frankly) but she does have some good ideas here and there. Just gotta dig for them. Yes it is possible to flex muscles both in rings going deeper into one's vagina, and also to the left and right side. Probably also "front" and "back". Just wanted to let everyone know I'm not inventing Aziraphale's little stunts out of pure whole-cloth. That's all I'm gonna say about that.
> 
> * Soooooo, Tumblr realized that Crowley had presented as female and had worn female wardrobe during several parts of the show... _after_ I'd gotten well-started on the original Seven Minutes In Hell. So I'm retconning a bit here. This is NOT to diminish the experience of anyone for whom a gender-fluid-and-perfectly-fine-with-it Crowley in-universe was significant; I know I love it too and I'm glad they provided that subtextual content. But I wanted to salute it in my work **and** also keep it making sense.
> 
> * "She was tall and her face was long and so was her nose and every single angle was sharp – and she was beautiful." -- Had a friend once, who was a girl and a friend and eventually for a bit something of a girlfriend. And she was tall and had red hair (well, dyed) and was angular and had a long nose -- and she was beautiful. And I was (and am) short, and blonde, and curvy -- and I am beautiful. Life took us down two separate paths but I still think of her sometimes with fondness, and I wanted to call it out here: no matter what you look like, you're beautiful. 
> 
> * My personal head-canon is that the wait-staff of the Ritz are in uneasy disapproval of Aziraphale in this scene. "I cannot believe he's cheating on that adorable boyfriend of his." "I know, and I get it -- but did you SEE her?"
> 
> * "For dessert he fed her, one tiny spoonful at a time, a sherbet that was less than ten cubic centimeters in volume. He had not a single bite for himself." -- again, this is not to be read as some sort of commentary on women and food. I deal a lot in subtext and here as in the show, food == sex. So Aziraphale is giving Crowley all he can at that moment and maintaining an immaculate control on himself, so that he doesn't wind up fucking her on the table. Hhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngh.
> 
> * Truthfully the last part of this scene reminds me a bit of the love-making in "Damage" -- something incredibly dark yet inevitable, the back-handed side of love. Crowley doesn't yet feel that the female facet of himself really belongs to him yet, so the whole experience is a bit disassociative. I think this scene is here because it's true. I could say it's to demonstrate that he's not 100% in enthusiastic joyful happy consent with everything that Aziraphale wants and does to him. I could say it's to display how you could love someone so much and they could love you so much in return and they could STILL read you in a messed-up way because there's nothing right to read, because you're messed up about the situation too.
> 
> But this scene is here because it's true, and it's what happens in that moment, and it doesn't change anything between them. It's a heavy weight dropped into the deep waters of Crowley's soul, and it will be a while before the ripples return...


	3. Where You Used To Be, There Is A Hole In The World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I **will** tell you that even though the Bentley occasionally crooned “Just one year of love... is better than a lifetime alone...” Aziraphale and Crowley wound up with over two and a half years together before the wrath of the Hosts came 'round again, and even for immortal beings that's a not-insignificant amount.
> 
> But no matter how much time in love we have, we always want more. It's just the way love is.
> 
> God is a lover; She understands this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A new _Seven Minutes_ chapter dropping on a Wednesday, and it not even noon yet? Yeah, well, I like to stay unpredictable. :)
> 
> Previous disclaimers still apply. Buckle up, darlings.
> 
> The title is from Edna St. Vincent Millay:
> 
> “Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”

I could go on and tell you (thus saith the Lord, narrating as usual) about the time not a week later where Aziraphale rewarded Crowley's courage in going femme to the Ritz by returning the favor, being the little curvy blonde bombshell on his arm.

(She wore a slinky silver number that trailed the floor, and her long curly hair in a half-up 'do strewn with rhinestone emerald pins. The muttering among the staff grew slightly louder – in the back passages and by the dish-washing station of course, they weren't **savages** – and when she laughed her delighted sultry laugh every eye in the place was on her.)

I could go on and tell you about how just over a season passed and after much private experimentation and personal thought, Crowley relaxed enough for them both to go to the Ritz glammed up together.

(There was nearly a riot. The rest of the room didn't dare to **breathe**. The entire staff pooled together and sent a **very** expensive and **very** old bottle of wine to the table, with their compliments to the ladies. Every customer in the building ordered tremendously costly meals, but most of the food went home in to-go boxes. The Bentley practically quivered with glee, all the way there and all the way back. That night dreams and fantasies burst forth all over London, a frenzy of unsatisfied longing; the Venn diagram of "people who wanted to **be** those two lovelies" and "people who wanted to be _sandwiched __**between**_ those two lovelies" carried statistically significant overlap in all genders. If Crowley had still been "reporting in", he would have written it up as a multi-target temptation and a smashing success.)

For the most part it was good, the whole playing with genders thing. It was something they enjoyed every now and again, in every possible configuration. Sometimes a few different configurations in one evening, assuming they were both well-hydrated and -rested enough. The demon discovered much of his wardrobe worked either way. And Aziraphale invested in a few frilly things that nominally were intended to wear to bed in private (if not then to sleep)... that could also be adjusted to fit a barrel-chest and more narrow hips. And his pajamas got very adorable, indeed.

Sometimes it wasn't good. Fortunately this was relatively rare.

("Darling it's not worth it dearest put him down he didn't mean it like that well maybe he did but still Crowley this will get too much attention of the sort we don't want Crowley **Crowley _C_**_**ROWLEY**_**,**" while the red-haired dame had him pinned to the brick wall two meters off the ground by one hand casually on his windpipe and her eyes were **literally** ablaze as she swore "The next time you wolf-whistle at anything that isn't an actual wolf you will _**wish**_ you had _**MERELY**_ fallen over dead.")  
  
(Once the little blonde managed to get the taller girl to drop him, it was a while before the man was able to crawl home. He got very drunk that night and thought about a lot of things. Within a month he'd applied to join the priesthood. In 2063 he was elevated to the position and title of Pope Innocent XV. He tried very hard to be good. He remained properly afraid of dogs, whistling, and red-headed women until the day he died.)

Some might think God is a writer in search of a compelling narrative, but this is incorrect.

Whatever else She may be, God is a lover.

And God... _**waits**_.

I **will** tell you that even though the Bentley occasionally crooned "Just one year of love... is better than a lifetime alone..." Aziraphale and Crowley wound up with over two and a half years together before the wrath of the Hosts came 'round again, and even for immortal beings that's a not-insignificant amount.

But no matter how much time in love we have, we always want more. It's just the way love is.

God is a lover; She understands this.

Aziraphale was waltzing through his shop to some Sondheim on the stereo, putting books back onto their proper shelves. The doors were locked and he was alone at the end of a nice productive day where he'd managed to persuade, cajole, ignore, and once or twice quietly miracle customers into utterly failing to buy any books.

It was winter and darkness fell early outside the windows; the angel knew Crowley was still working hard on something from their conversation at lunch ("So it turns out: if driver-less cars could make eye-contact with pedestrians it's a tiny bit safer for the mortals... and also **massively** disturbing to them. Real uncanny-valley, 'Maximum Overdrive' level stuff! Isn't that incredible?!") but he would have to wrap it up soon, in order to bring the Bentley and meet Aziraphale downtown.

They had an opera to catch, after all.

Then there was a hammering on the front door. "Please help me!"

"We're closed!" he chirped, determined to retain his good mood.

But the banging continued and he looked up – and saw a terrified face, bloodless with fright, tears and saliva spattering the glass as the figure hammered the twin oak barriers with its left fist.

"They're after me!" she screamed.

He rushed to unbar the lock and the stranger practically fell onto him, knocking them both to the floor. She scrabbled at him mindlessly.

"I'm sorry – I'm so sorry..."  
  
"It's quite alright, my dear – I'll lock us back up and you'll be safe in here until the police--"

A slash of pain across the back of his left hand. He was bleeding, and the wound began to itch almost immediately.

"I'm so sorry," she was sobbing. "The leukemia... they said my little girl would get better if I just--"  
  
"No," Aziraphale breathed. Something in her right hand, a sharp metal needle. The spindle of a spinning-wheel... Already the world was swimming in front of his gaze; his collar felt hot and tight.

Immortal seraph in a mortal-ish body... whatever works on a mortal body would also... work... He tried to roll onto his knees but no muscle would obey him; he fell to one side, mouth filled with sour bile.

And she was pulling back, still crying apologies as if that changed **anything**, and two massive shapes came through the open door and shunted her away.

"I forgive you," the angel whispered, not knowing to whom he spoke.

Then brilliant iridescent scales filled his hallucinating brain, mirrored in his eyes – and Aziraphale was abruptly Somewhere Else.

Five minutes later, across town...

Crowley woke up to utter destruction in his flat.

Through the swiveling cement door he could see his chair was wrecked – broken in several places, the upholstery slashed and the stuffing in the cushion tossed to the four winds. The desk was torn physically apart as if it had been wet cardboard instead of gilded hardwood. One of the desk's post-legs had been thrust through the body of his sleek little laptop (that had done no one harm – well, no one any truly serious or traceable amount of harm). His ansaphone had been smashed repeatedly against the tempered-glass windows... and even they had crazed with cracks at the center of each blow.

More came back to him, as memory emerged from the frightened depths of disassociated fog.

His bed had been shredded: mattress, sheets, duvet, pillows, everything. In the bathroom every single piece of tile and porcelain had exploded; the water-pipes were spraying mindlessly into the wreckage.

In the kitchen the refrigerator had been overturned, the butcher-block island picked up and rammed through its back which even now still hissed chemical spume into the air. Wherever there had been drywall, there wasn't – only crumbles and dust.

But the perpetrator had been selective. None of the statues had been harmed; the dove-shaped lectern Crowley knew sat inviolate at the other end of the flat. And although the work-sketch of the Mona Lisa had been ripped off the wall and hurled with significant force, Crowley had had it framed by professionals who'd developed their work with an eye toward protecting delicate art from every circumstance up to and including nuclear devastation – if you were still alive during the fallout and subsequent slow death of society as we know it, you would still be enjoying your prized cultural relics. Or trading them for food and clean water.

And here the crazed, violent madman had finally fallen – here on the floor in the atrium, where the plants quaked in moderate terror around him, because they had **never** see him lose it like this and he hadn't even so much as raised his voice in their presence in two and a half years.

Thank Somebody they weren't hurt, the demon thought, raking one bleeding, drywall-dust-caked hand through his wild hair.

No, of course they wouldn't have been; because Aziraphale would have been upset if he'd hurt the plants.

It was him. It was Crowley. Crowley had destroyed his own flat.

Great, we've solved the mystery of the hour. Can we take a guess as to why?  
  
Because, five minutes before, the bond in the back of his mind had just simply... ceased to be.

Imagine hearing a sound, for over two years. All the time, waking and sleeping. And this sound is the indicator of the life-blood, the heartbeat, the very existence of someone that you adore. Sometimes it's turned up like a radio, where you can hear words and even music in it. Sometimes it's turned down low, a background noise, a white noise you're not even consciously aware you still hear.

But no matter how you hear it and how long you hear it, you love it. Because it's **them** that you're hearing, connected to you.

And one day out of nowhere, it just vanishes without a trace.

He wanted to curl up into a little ball and cry. He wanted to cease existing.

But he wouldn't – because Aziraphale was still alive out there. Somewhere. Crowley knew he'd know somehow, if Aziraphale had been not merely disincorporated but also destroyed.

(But would you? Would you really? asked the tiny desperate voice of his worst fears.)

He pushed to his feet.

He was possibly just disembodied for a moment. Somehow... something had happened... he was an idiot about crossing the street anyway; Crowley had more than once asked him if he trusted to God to save him from the lorries around here.

And if that was so, they would manage. Perhaps share **his** body if they had to, if nothing else could be done. Love would find a way.

But if he had been merely unintentionally shuffled off the mortal coil – he might have been pulled back into Heaven against his will. Return to Sender, sort of thing. That could be why Crowley couldn't sense any trace of him here on Earth: that same wretched lack of feeling he'd had in the burning book shop right before the Near-Apocalypse-Experience.

And Heaven wasn't going to let him go without a fight.

He balled up his fists, heard the blood drip from between his fingers to the floor.

In that thought alone, Crowley and Heaven were united.

If Aziraphale was there in Heaven, Crowley would have him back. No matter the price.

And if Aziraphale was... **was**...

Then Crowley would wreak Hell's fury upon the Host until they managed sufficient firepower to send the demon to join his beloved.

Fifty-seven seconds later he slid his filthy body across the front seat of the Bentley, who cringed away from it – then groaned aloud in a voice of tortured metal, grieving with him.

Good old car; it'd felt it too, now.

He'd already been dressed for the opera, a sleek black suit-jacket and a white linen shirt; Aziraphale had... had still been trying to decide what to wear, back and forth between a cream-colored suit and the emerald sleeveless with the mermaid train he so adored. It was green like the Garden had been green. It was green like the little plants of their pocket-dimension, where the gold and white flowers still bloomed.

Now Crowley shredded the front of his shirt, tearing it into strips to begin bandaging his hands.

"No arguments now, my friend," said the demon, gently nonetheless. "Take me to the Tower. Then bring yourself home if you can."

Trembling and obedient, the Bentley pulled away from the kerb.

Say what you want about a Stairway to Heaven or a Highway to Hell – practical experience proved that from the ground floor there was at least two escalator rides and an elevator trip before you really started getting into either one.

He stepped onto the first escalator going up, which as a demon You Did Not Do. Everyone had been warned at least once, and usually several times. Pain of complete destruction, type of thing. Right about now the air should be filled with the harmonic war-cries of a thousand battle-cherubim.  
  
(The strange beings inside spinning wheels of fire and light, the ones that had a few hundred wings and way too many eyes and non-Euclidean geometry somehow encased in physical form. Not the fat little naked flying babies with bows and arrows. That would have been **weird**.)  
  
But the air remained empty, surprisingly enough.

Crowley wreathed his bandaged fists in Hell-fire, and stood on the escalator like a tourist.

Floor after floor passed as he patiently climbed the Tower – all of them silent. It seemed to the demon that he could hear whispers behind doors and around corners, but nothing came out to meet him or try to stop him. And as time stretched onward, marked only by dozens of floor numbers counting down as he went up, he began to think he must be imagining it.

By floor number four, Crowley began to wonder if he had gone mad. As in, completely insane.

Heaven was empty – where were all the angels? Here he was, a demon, totally profaning holy ground with infernal snake-skin boots.

There wasn't much further to go. Round about here you started getting the nice corner offices and sweeping board rooms. Floor One was that great mezzanine from which you could view all the kingdoms of the world.

The one where they'd tried to execute him, dressed in Aziraphale's Appearance.

He had no real clue what to do or where to go if that glass box was empty; floating above it in the ether was an extra-dimensional fortress in which the Metatron danced attendance on the will of the Almighty, spending centuries in meditation attuned to the specific frequency of the direct voice of God. And presumably somewhere beyond that in the void was God Herself.

Well. His Aziraphale awaited him, in this universe or the next. If he must leap to Metatron's stronghold among the stars to be reunited with him, then that was what he would do.

If after that he had to take the fight all the way to God in order to reach his angel... he'd change into a woman first, and it'd be The Cat-Fight To End All Cat-Fights.

And just as he was psyching himself up for this (fingernails? Long or short? Short, because if he had to right-hook a Bitch he didn't want to open up the wounds on his palms again) he stepped into the mezzanine and found Gabriel and Michael waiting for him.

"Crowley! Long time, no see. I love your suit. Well, I love what it **used** to be," smarmed Gabriel with his big stupid head, coming forward to greet him.

The Hell-fire in his hands flared brightly; Gabriel stepped back. "Where's Aziraphale," the demon said.

"Not. Here," said Michael crisply.

"But alive."  
  
"For now."

"You knew," said the demon, vibrating with rage. "You knew he was the strongest of us both, the most dangerous. You knew you had to take him by surprise and take him first, or else he would have **ended** you. And I would have eaten popcorn and watched."

"Pffft, are you kidding? Of **course** we knew!" Gabriel laughed his smug little laugh, lavender eyes alight with nothing like true humor. "If you'd seen that look of hatred he gave me right before he stepped into the Hell-fire – and then he blew it right back in our faces? We got a great big dose of just how... twisted... he'd become from his acquaintance with you."

Crowley blanched, doused with horror to his very core. It was as cold as holy water in a church font.

"Hold on! Let's all just stop right there," Michael interrupted. "There's absolutely no purpose to this wrangling and we'll all get so much further if we just talk it out. I mean, we want the same thing that you do." Their voice was calm and reasonable as they came forward, hands empty and spread in a plea for civility.

"I want him **back!**" he growled.

"Yes I know. Of course you do. Why else would you have come so far, so fast? And we have found a means to make it happen." They threw a glance at Gabriel who, surprisingly, backed up a pace. "Just put the flame away and I will tell you. Like we're just two intelligent beings of the Hosts, talking politely."

They took another step, golden cheek-bones gleaming as they gazed guilelessly into his eyes. Somebody, they hadn't changed a single bit. Not since before Crowley had Fallen.

He shut off the Hell-fire with a thought.

"Tell me what you want, Michael. What I have to do, to see him again."  
  
"All you have to do," said Michael, oozing sincerity as they crossed the last necessary distance, "is finish stepping into the trap."

They lay their hands on his forearms and a portal opened in the center of their chest, that sucked him through it and into another world.

The passage was not smooth or gentle – whereas the transition for himself or Aziraphale into the pocket-dimension they shared (no longer merely "his" but somewhere seamlessly along the way become "theirs") was something of a gliding step outward and upward, this was a bone-clattering, teeth-chattering ride along a mine-train rail that shook your brains out your ears and lasted ages longer than anything this unpleasant had a right to.

They're no good at it, he thought – apropos of nothing, before he finally blacked out.

He awoke possibly ages later, on a high mountain precipice. The winds howled around and below him; only a narrow switchback path connected this peak with the rest of the visible world. Above were naked and untouchable clouds in the vault of an empty sky and in all directions other jagged stone ranges, scrubbed bare by constant gales, were hundreds of kilometers away in that pristine clarity that only chilled air with low oxygen content could give you.

It looked like the top of Mount Everest, except with less snow and corpses.

There was a shining silver eye-bolt in the ground before him, as big as his head. It was tightened into the very granite. From it was fastened five chains, and they led to manacles which encircled his wrists and ankles.

He didn't think he could have helped it, once he had time to think about it later – it was instinct. Trapped in one form? Shift to another.

It would have worked maybe, if it'd just been the manacles. Can't chain arms and legs that you don't have.

But there had also been a thick silver collar around his throat.

And as a thirteen meter long serpent his neck was much bigger.

Suddenly his air was cut off. He flailed at the silver band that choked him – with hands that didn't exist at the moment.

Before he could throw himself to the ground and thrash like a fish on a hook, Michael was there. They socked him smartly across the snoot, one side and then the other. And if angels had regional boxing leagues Michael would have been a title-belt holder. Nothing about those love-taps was lovely.

"Get a hold of yourself," they were screaming. "Back into human-shape, you idiot! Dear Lord that halfway transformation is... ghastly...!" They turned their face to the side and retched, producing nothing but floral-scented air.

Crowley crouched on the stone on all newly-restored fours and panted. Oye. Regular angels. He'd forgotten how twee they all were. Vomiting potpourri fumes, pissing attar of roses. But not ever shitting fine chocolate, oh no. They'd never do anything so unmannerly as to pass a bowel movement.

"You'll mind yourself and keep to a proper shape here, fiend," they were saying, picking up the cold metal manacles and fastening them back into place. The cuffs had no visible locks or hinges but opened and closed at the seraph's will. "While you can't die in this realm you can choke yourself forever if you're too stupid to pull yourself out of it."

"I want to complain to the concierge," groaned Crowley.

"Speaking."  
  
"Where on Earth are we?"  
  
"Nowhere on Earth, now." They managed a near-Gabriel level of smug bastard. "We had to watch you both for ages to see what you were doing and how you did it, but we did cop to the trick eventually."

He rolled to sit on the chilly stone and look up at them. "Oh Somebody. You've learned to make your own pocket-dimensions."  
  
"Yes. And a demon can't escape from an angel's own dimension. We tested it."

Wait, back up a moment. "You were **watching**?"  
  
Their smile was both triumphant and disgusted. "Once you quit checking on the regular? We surely were. And while we couldn't see what you did in your own little playground, we saw everything that you did on Earth. Every. Single. Thing."

Crowley leaned back, heedless of the pain in his palms, showing all his teeth in what someone incredibly naive might have called a grin. "Spot anything you like, dearie?"

Michael made another revolted noise, and spat. Before the mouthful of saliva could hit the ground it became a silver butterfly and floated away on the gusting up-draft. "You both nauseate me. Him, letting you bite him like some sort of rutting animal – and then putting the holy glory of God on your flesh without also obliterating you. Not to mention all of the other millions of disgusting things the two of you did to each other."

"And I loved every single fucking second of it. For that matter, so did he."

They hissed through gold-lined teeth, then manifested a little gilded rococo seat just out of reach of the chains and settled onto it primly.

"What **happened** to you, Jophiel? I remember you from before. You were among the best and brightest of us all, even including Lord Lucifer himself." They almost sounded truthful. As if they really were curious and wanted to know.  
  
Well, they sounded that way before and it was the last piece of bait in the trap, too.

"'The Beauty of God'," Crowley translated his dead-name morosely.

"And you **were** – ever so lovely. The most brilliant star in all the sky."

"Bitch, I still am." He sniffed and tugged at each manacle as if adjusting his shirt cuffs. "What happened is I finally got tired of my entire damn family telling me to shut up and just look pretty."

"And that was sufficient to make you turn your back upon the Almighty?"

"You lot threw me out, if you would recall. And even if I'd walked away from anything – it would have been the Host. God had nothing to do with it."  
  
"God and the Host are one," they answered stiffly.

"Pfffft, you freaking wish. Anyway; you've gotten what you wanted, Michael. Here I am in your empty, dead little world, obviously your prisoner. I don't understand – what more are you trying to get out of me? Are you worried about Falling yourself?"

"Not in the slightest," they answered, radiating disdain. "But you've pulled one of the Heavenly Host down with you, now. Aziraphale was never disobedient **or** dangerous until you began your work on him."  
  
Crowley studied the angel as if they were some massive, disgusting, but slightly interesting bug found on the sidewalk.

"Feel free to go to Hell – and while you're down there learn to lie, because you're shite at it."

"I simply want to understand how you've become the God-forsaken monster that you are, contaminating every single thing you touch, and how we can prevent Aziraphale's loss from happening to anyone else."  
  
His lips curled in a snarl. "God **sees** me, hears all my words and thoughts, watches my deeds and who they're done to and with – and She has **not** forsaken me. She still loves me. I know it in my heart!"

Michael surged to their feet, cold with rage. "You know _**nothing.**_

"You think you're one of the precious little sparrows of the forest, that God is watching every moment to see if you fly or fall? You think She still cares what happens – to the likes of **you**?!"  
  
They smoothed the front of their immaculate dove-gray power-suit, distant as the clouds. "You don't understand yet, but you'll have plenty of time to do so. Having previously failed to destroy you and your... partner in crime, we've settled for the moment on keeping you jailed. When separated, it seems that your ability to wreak havoc may be curtailed."  
  
"So he is alive."  
  
"I don't lie," and they looked down the length of their nose at the demon on the ground. "Especially when there's no reason to do so. All we intend to do is give our mutual sides some peace and quiet in which to find some sort of permanent fix for the problem you both present."  
  
"Leaving us alone forever would have worked."

"Watch very closely," they continued, steam-rolling over the top of his interruption. "See how the days in here will become weeks, and then months. And then years. And when they sink into your infernal bones you will finally understand, in your **heart** – that this is a life sentence of eternity.

"You will finally grasp that, no matter however many billions of years until the end of the universe: _**you will never see your lover again.**_

"After this moment you won't even so much as know if he still _**lives**_ or if we have finally found a method by which to execute one of you at last. And the very, **very** highest you may hope for – is that we someday find the means to execute you, too.

"Because otherwise you will exist alone in this quarantine until the instant the universe ends.

"So cry out to God. Go right ahead! There's nothing and no one here but the wind to witness your screams. There's all that ever has been and ever will be. Beg Her to set you free. **Beg** Her to reunite you with your _**beloved**_. And when God answers you in Her silence you will know I have not lied at all."

They shot their cuffs, adjusting the golden angel-winged cuff-links.

"You will only wish I _**had**_," they whispered.

Then Michael was gone, and the solitude around the demon was complete.

He waited.

Wind, and cold untouchable mountains, and a weak sun hidden behind a hazy shroud of clouds; these were now his only companions.

He wished he could see the stars in the nighttime sky. It would all turn out okay, if he could see even just one star.

Then he was bucking against the chains, fighting backwards, trying to pull toward the cliff behind him – but they wouldn't give. Ordinary silver would have twisted asunder under the strength he could muster at this level of desperation.

So he tried to turn inward, into his and Aziraphale's own pocket-dimension within his soul.

It wouldn't go. He couldn't go. He was still stuck in the chains atop the mountain like some maddened half-rate Prometheus. Even attempting it gave a weird sensation, like that feeling you get in the middle of a bad night of drinking or perhaps the onslaught of a stomach flu, where you need to puke (even if you desperately don't want to) but your body just can't quite make it happen.

The angels... had wrought their prison very well.

They'd had over two and a half years to perfect it. While Crowley and Aziraphale were busy loving, the Heavenly Host had been busy scheming.

A terrified dry sob burst from his throat, carried off on the eager wind. It wouldn't take years for him to understand. Crowley was a quick study.

He was already halfway there.

His beloved angel could be destroyed somewhere out there in his own prison - and Crowley wouldn't know, wouldn't feel it. He wouldn't so much as have the comfort of **knowing** either way.

But he couldn't die, himself. They'd prevented him from having even that final escape.

He opened and closed his hands, that were filled with nothing but blood and linen.

"Aziraphale," he breathed.

He laid down on icy stone, curling into a ball, snake-eyes wide and sightless in a grief too all-encompassing to permit the relief of tears.

"Oh God. God, please. Please help us both."

It was a prayer. Crowley's first since the Fall.

"Help him, please. Let me see him again. Let me hold him again. God please... please... hear me now. I'm begging you. Don't let it end like this. Please."

He was conscious of how tiny his voice felt. How utterly helpless it sounded.

There was no reply but the wind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * The staff at the Ritz when Crowley is masculine-presenting and Aziraphale is female-presenting: "Just because you caught your boyfriend cheating on you doesn't mean you have to go out and do it yourself -- I mean, you've got to take the higher road!" "I know, and I understand... but did you SEE her?"
> 
> * The staff at the Ritz when both our dears show up as ladies? They think that the two women found out about being used in affairs, met each other to talk it out, then decided to get together. There was much rejoicing back by the dish-washing station; they sent wine to the table as an arresteddevelopment_goodforher.gif sort of gesture. A month later as various combinations continued to show up occasionally, they came to assume that the fall-out of all the drama was a happy four-person poly-cule and that the details were rightfully none of their business.
> 
> * You can tell from the dialogue that the future Pope wolf-whistled at Aziraphale. If someone cat-calls Crowley while Aziraphale is there to witness, that person will then find one toe stuck to the ground as they walk -- meaning they fall and break their nose or cheekbone on the sidewalk and will be too busy bleeding to make further trouble. So if it had been the other way around, the man in question would have had some extensive dental reconstruction and we would have gotten a Pope Pius XVI in 2063.
> 
> * The Sondheim on the stereo in the bookshop was "Sweeney Todd" -- because "A Little Priest" is a total bop, and because Aziraphale loves epic villains who are unapologetically and straightforwardly evil.
> 
> * Aziraphale's brain connects the concept of "poisoned metal needle" with the cursed spinning-wheel spindle from Sleeping Beauty.
> 
> * Ever accidentally punctured a refrigerator? ... It's not fun.
> 
> * In (Love's) arms, my lady lay asleep, wrapped in a veil.  
He woke her then and, trembling and obedient,  
She ate that burning heart out of his hand...  
\-- Dante Alighieri 
> 
> * I got information on the Tower [from this very helpful article.](https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/designing-good-omens-stairway-to-heaven-and-hell)
> 
> * Crowley contemplates changing into a woman to fight God because he's been on Earth long enough to pick up the general subconscious norms, which include "If you're intending to fight a woman and you're planning to hit first (and hopefully last, if you can manage it), it's more socially acceptable to also be female." Also he's pretty sure his feminine aspect is more vicious; Pope Innocent XV would agree.
> 
> * We aren't done yet. I did promise you all the darkness, after all.


	4. Take Him And Cut Him Out In Little Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "They said yeh would try that," offered the figure who'd been cleaning (for a certain value of cleaning) Aziraphale's wound. "But yeh cain' go out, not while I dun let yeh." The figure hesitated. "That smells like it musta been a good mackerel."
> 
> It **had** been an excellent _saba_ sashimi from the little shop on the corner, at least the first time around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is of course a quote from Romeo and Juliet:
> 
> "Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,  
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,  
Take him and cut him out in little stars,  
And he will make the face of heaven so fine  
That all the world will be in love with night  
And pay no worship to the garish sun."

Aziraphale awoke to a fiery pain across the back of his left hand. He flinched away from the source of that pain – who also flinched away from him.

Let time slow down a bit, so we can see everything that Aziraphale saw in those first few instants of consciousness.

The source of the stinging sensation was a dirty wet rag rubbed to the wound he'd sustained during his abduction. The rag was now dropped by a bilge bucket that smelled strongly of seawater – thus the burn of salt in an open cut.

The floor under Aziraphale's hands was featureless white.

And the bond was gone.

Still in that first millisecond and a half: on instinct he reached for his and Crowley's pocket-dimension, seeking his lover, seeking escape.

The effort rebounded with agony and nausea... hard. He vomited his early dinner on the immaculate floor.

"They said yeh would try that," offered the figure who'd been cleaning (for a certain value of cleaning) Aziraphale's wound. "But yeh cain' go out, na while I dun let yeh." The figure hesitated. "That smells like it musta been a good mackerel."

It **had** been an excellent _saba_ sashimi from the little shop on the corner, at least the first time around.  
  
"Okay," Aziraphale answered in a daze. Basic survival knowledge was kicking in. Yes, the bond was gone. Yes, he was imprisoned with (by?) this other person he hadn't looked too closely at yet.

But the simple bed-rock fact of the angel's internal view of the universe was this: there was no conceivable alternate reality (including the current one) where any self-respecting Aziraphale would exist when some sort of Crowley did not. And since Aziraphale certainly did exist at present, as his pain and nausea confirmed for him, then somewhere and somehow Crowley must still exist also. Therefore he would continue to operate as usual and trust that in time he and Crowley would be reunited.

(This is a little bit like opening a wooden crate with the crowbar packed inside it.)

He raised his head and the figure backed up to – well, there wasn't a wall. The ceilings and sides of this room were of the same alabaster nothingness as the floor. But it felt as if there was a boundary around six or seven meters away from Aziraphale in every direction and it was to this that his jailer set their back.

Ginger hair, shiny scales, the round staring blue eyes and jagged fang-filled mouth of a moray eel – "Lord Dagon," said the angel.  
  
The Lord of the Files and Master of Torments looked shocked. "How do yeh know my name?"

Aziraphale's brain won the nanosecond races again.

"Do you truly believe that Heaven doesn't try to get its intelligence on Hell, as much as the reverse is true?"  
  
The demon pondered this a moment.

"In any case... it appears that some demons in Hell have learned to make their own pocket-dimensions?"  
  
Dagon nodded, now on more solid turf. "Heaven an' Hell both; we learned tha stunt from watchen yeh an' Crowley."

Aziraphale shoved himself into a sitting-up position – and the other flinched back again, as if they would push themselves through the wall-space if they could.

Aziraphale took as many as two seconds to consider this, since it seemed to be important: Crowley had known how to describe Lord Dagon by sight but hadn't interacted much directly with the Lord of the Files. And, while this particular demon had seemed quite self-assured and confident during "Crowley's" trial and subsequent failed execution attempt, being one-on-one with a stranger might be a different proposition. Watch any howling mob to see the truism demonstrated: it's easier to be a bastard when surrounded by a lot of other bastards.

And even though the angel did all he could to come across as harmless, it might even be because Aziraphale was...

Ah. Let's approach that concept gently, he thought. "Well, do you like it to be this... empty?" he said instead, being careful not to move or look too directly at Dagon. "You could have anything you want in here."  
  
"It's supposed ta be a jail."

"I understand that, certainly. But if it's just you and me and here – and I certainly won't and can't tell anyone – you can have it look like whatever you want. It'll still be a jail as long as I can't leave, right?"

"s'right," they said after a long moment.

"So you can have it look like anything you want in here. And you should, as payment for having to be a jailer. Crowley has his looking like a d--"

"Tha sea," Dagon interrupted – and all of a sudden the two of them were on a beach at twilight. Dark clouds heaved in the distant sky and the wind whipped the dunes behind them constantly, causing the long grasses to flail and sussurrate. The moon was somewhere hidden behind scattered breaths of mist, but still pouring silver light out onto the endless waves.

Aziraphale pushed himself slowly and carefully onto his feet... and Dagon took no notice. Every particle of their attention was focused longingly on the thronging ocean: the distant ruler-straight horizon, the busy shore where foam boiled eternal, the wind and sand and midnight blue sky without a single star.

The demon might well have been transfixed or hypnotized somehow.

Aziraphale took the moment of distraction to shift into female form.

"I thought you were fairly high up in the ranks, and all – how'd you wind up as my jailer?"  
  
"They had contests ta see which demon was tha best at maken these lil pocket places... an' I won," said Dagon distantly.

"Doesn't look like much of a prize," the angel muttered.

The Master of Torments turned to look at Aziraphale – and was shocked again. Shocked that was she was suddenly so close, not scared that –

"Yeh're a girl?"

"I can be whatever I feel like being," Aziraphale said lightly. "And it seemed like maybe... you don't much care for men."

What with Lord Beelzebub presenting as female, for the most part – and with Lord Dagon the equal of Hastur in Hell - there weren't too many male demons that could be any trouble to them.

Dagon's fanged maw hung open a moment longer... then shut with a snap. Their eyes narrowed knowingly; their gaze searched Aziraphale's face.

"Yah. Meybe so."

"Well, I'll do whatever I can to help make this, er, situation... just as pleasant as possible for both of us, of course. You'd be one of the New Ones, wouldn't you?"  
  
(The New Ones had been called the New Ones for six millennia and probably would be called the New Ones until at least a few million years had passed and someone thought it was worth the bother to think of a proper name for them. You see: while the number of Fallen angels was practically constant, the human population had exploded in size – and more demons were required to evenly spread temptation around. So the Infernal Host started locating the likely talents among the freshly damned and elevating them after trial periods. Say what you like, but in Hell getting out of the cube-pits and into a slightly nicer office was worth the hassle of becoming management.)

"Yah! I died in tha service of tha Dark Lady of Doona in 1588. Four hunnerd an' thirty-one years, worken my way up tha ranks in Hell. Got ta tha highest position of all tha New Ones, I have."

Another second's quick thought; Aziraphale made her tone deliberately trifling. "High enough for the shit detail, at least."

Dagon's eyes went wide with surprise. Then they burst out in a wheezing guffaw.

"Yeh – yeh have that one right, angel. High enough ta carry what rolls downhill! Crowley musta told yeh a mort about us!"  
  
"And what he didn't, I could guess," she answered, sending Lord Dagon into another gale of laughter.

Aziraphale watched the demon with a gentle amused smile on her face and sickened rage in her heart. Here she was, just chatting gaily along with her infernal jailer. Who exactly was supposed to be developing Stockholm syndrome here?

But Hell really wasn't the place where anyone got positive feedback, Aziraphale thought again. When was the last time someone actually asked Lord Dagon about themselves? Listened to the answer? Cared about how they felt?  
  
Aziraphale shifted her weight, moving into a position that more mirrored Dagon's – and thought: we're both getting Stockholm syndrome. Up to a certain point, this is how trauma bonding works...

… and maybe I can use it.

"I would have figured Heaven and Hell would be out to destroy us, when they came around this time – or at least kidnap us and try to figure out how to do so," she continued blithely. Here we are, just two sentient beings of the world, engaged in idle conversation. Feel free to just, ooooh... tell me everything.

"Oh naaaaaaah, nah nah nah, na at all. The Hosts on both sides agreed ta that. Could yeh imagine how Heaven would feel if Hell found a way ta destroy tha angel that na even Hell-fire could harm? Or vice versa?"

So Crowley was alive, and would stay that way. What developed in Aziraphale's celestial brain wasn't hope – hope had no place here on this barren, storm-lashed beach.

It was a path forward... and the tiniest stirrings of a plan.

"Plus, it was tha one thing that both Hosts agreed was worse than Hell: endless boredom."

"Ohhh, I don't think this is so bad at all. Who could be bored, gazing at that beautiful ocean?"

Dagon looked out upon the surging water again and was lost for a few more moments. Aziraphale let all expression fade from her face, watching them. Studying them.

Then she healed the burning cut across the back of her hand with the most minor of miracles, and let it scar. May that raised and rough line of flesh persist as a reminder that even innocence can serve evil intention.

She leaned in then, and the movement distracted Dagon just the slightest amount; their gaze zigzagged but eventually came to rest on Aziraphale once more.

"You know, you could come here whenever you want. You don't even have to interact with me if you'd rather not. You could just look out to sea as long as you please."

Dagon rubbed the back of their neck self-consciously. "Nah... if they cain' find me in tha Stacks after an hour or two they make a mort of fuss."

The Stacks – it rang a faint bell in the angel's memory. The Lord of the Files managed the endless hallways of the records of the damned: seductions and temptations both attempted and achieved, and simply every piece of minutiae about the souls actually sent to Hell. The better to torment them, of course; taunt them with what they were now forever denied, or torture them with whatever they feared or hated most in life.

"Well, if you had a desk or something in there, you could leave an Appearance at it. That way you'd know if someone wanted you for something and you could go right back."

Dagon's wide gaze was blank (er, blanker than usual) with confusion.

"Ohhhhhhh... that's one of my dearest's clever inventions, isn't it," Aziraphale purred. "Gosh, I bet Heaven and Hell would give just about **anything** to know about **that **particular talent."

The dart struck home; the demon perked up immediately.

"Then yeh haveta tell me!"

"Perhaps we could do a little trade. Could you put a house of some sort up here by the shore? Although I dearly love the sea, I would like to have some shelter in case that storm ever breaks..." She trailed off meaningfully, gesturing up toward a nearby set of cliffs that loomed over the beach head.

With the merest thought, a great stone castle surmounted those heights in the next instant. Aziraphale bounced and clapped happily, casting her most sparkly grin up into the eel-demon's face, sure to catch how the demon nearly smiled back down at her.

"Thank you so much! That will absolutely do. Now, are you ready to learn how to make an Appearance?"

Dagon oriented squarely to face Aziraphale, the ocean temporarily out of their thoughts as they clasped their hands in a position of focus and concentration. "Yah, mum!"

"Think of the Mona Lisa," Aziraphale began – and stopped, choking on unexpected sensation.

No. Not now, no tears. Not a single tear until the day when we are one again.

She coughed to clear her throat. "Actually, think of it a bit like clothing – but it's all over you, everywhere, covering every hair and eyelash and scale and fingernail. It's built out of the way that people have looked at you across all the years of your life and afterlife. Every single time they glanced at you, called your name, heard your voice or thought of you: they contributed to the image that you wear on your skin."

Dagon frowned, half in concentration and half in some unnamed emotion.

"But you **own** that image. It belongs to you and you can do whatever you want with it. So if you stand here and push it out, back into the realm of Hell, it will sit there at your desk looking and smelling and breathing just like you. It's like an answering machine... uh, or a very lifelike doll? And if someone tries to talk to it or touch it, you'll hear it and feel it here. Then you can go back inside it without anyone noticing. It will be as if you were never away."  
  
"Only I was here."

"Yes. Whenever you wish to be."

Dagon's eyes narrowed and unfocused slightly, their attention bent on their connection to their home dimension and where it led to their souls here inside their own tiny universe.

"I think I did it," they breathed. Aziraphale spread her hands.

"Since you've got me locked down, I can't see out and help you with it. But you can step out to it and then step back in here; it should feel a bit different. Because of the clothes, you see."  
  
Dagon gave her another long measuring look. Then they blinked away – and almost immediately returned.

"Like four sets of trousers!" they hissed in mild irritation.

"I had the same problem too! Yes, you have to vanish your clothing if you actually want to **wear **an Appearance for any length of time without, er, chaffing. Wait, before you go –" and she reached out and very nearly touched Dagon's forearm, but didn't.

"Yah?"

"The woman... who got me with the poisoned needle, that resulted in me being here with you."

Again with one of those looks; what did they mean?

"Yah."  
  
"Could you... make sure that her daughter will be okay? I know that Heaven sometimes forgets about people, after."

"After?" Now Dagon's expression was sly. They were going to make her say it.

"After they're no longer of use."

Dagon bit their lip. There was a lot of teeth and a fair amount of lip. For the second time, the angel ruthlessly crushed her emotional surge.

"I dun know what I could do for her, either."

"You're a demon, Lord Dagon – and a demon shares much in common with an angel. Many of them used to **be** angels."

"Na me, though."

"Only try," begged Aziraphale and this time she **did** lightly rest a hand on Dagon's forearm, exerting herself at her most winsome. "**Please.** It would mean so much."

Dagon looked down at the little hand, then back into Aziraphale's eyes.

"I will try," they answered diffidently. In the next instant, they vanished.

Aziraphale felt the solitude – she was conscious of herself as a very small and comparatively insignificant creature, the only thing to exist here beside an uncaring ocean under a brooding sky.

But the castle on the heights was of good solid stone and mortar, and in the highest window some light source lessened the interior gloom.

With a firm grip on her heart, Aziraphale moved on to the next challenge.

Deep within the stacks of Hell, the Master of Torments sat in their desk.

Not "at" but "in" – the desk was surrounded on three and a half sides by walls of paper at least a meter thick and two meters high. The opening that remained was a narrow doorway that permitted entry only in single file (and/or less, for some of the imps built like refrigerators who were only able to stick their head in). The overlap and the weight of all the various piles combined made the structure nigh unshakable.

It was like a little fortress made entirely of tax returns.

This meant that no one could approach Dagon from behind, or without them receiving other sufficient warning.

It might have surprised Aziraphale to learn that Dagon was familiar with the concept of answering machines. It would have surprised her still further to see that on Lord Dagon's desk was a black plastic telephone set straight out of the 1980's, with push-buttons on the keypad for the numbers.

Hell would eventually find out what it needed to know from the paperwork; there was a more pressing communication as far as Lord Dagon was concerned.

They picked up the phone and it dialed itself.

"What?!" snarled Michael as a salutation. "I'm busy!"  
  
Dagon waited in silence, for a long count of three.

(For the first several weeks of their uneasy partnership Lord Dagon had been a bit overawed by the celestial being, and had even gone so far as to try and speak more properly as they did when called on to do demonic rallies or any other public performance. After certain events however, their overall opinion had shifted into something closer to "Fuck this bitch" and so they no longer bothered.)

"That's two apologies yeh now owe me," they eventually answered in measured tones.

"I don't-" began the angel, and Dagon interrupted with that same smooth disinterested attitude.

"I learned somethen from tha angel that yeh want ta know, even if yeh dun **know** yeh want ta know it yet. So first yeh apologize for what yeh've done, an' then I tell yeh."

"I am sorry for snapping at you when I picked up." Michael's voice was hardly contrite. "You've caught me at a bad time. I really am very busy."

"... an'?" prompted Dagon.

"And?! I don't know what you mean."  
  
"Yeh know **exactly** what I mean."

Dagon was sitting ram-rod upright in their chair. No portion of their body touched the back of the seat.

"Oh. That. Yes. I'm sorry for that, too."  
  
"Are yeh really."

"Yes. It seemed... necessary at the time. But I understand I should have taken your word on it, and failing to do so was not an optimal way to begin a partnership like this. Everything that happened at the time just got... carried away, I think."  
  
The Lord of the Files occasionally **looked** at the paperwork that fell under their purview, so recognized passive voice when they heard it. It was a sly and sneaking voice that tried to pass blame off to someone or something else, never owning its actions.

But it was probably the best that Dagon would get out of the seraph.

For now.

So, with a purely internal sigh, the demon related to Michael what Aziraphale had told them regarding Appearances, then described their own test attempt.

"This changes things quite a bit," admitted Michael. "My team will have to discuss this and get back to yours. How'd you get it out of him?"

Dagon flinched at the last word, but carefully – their back was still sore, weeks later.

"I **talked** with my prisoner. Meybe yeh should try it. Oh, an' one more thing."

"Yes?" A testy rejoinder.

"That woman yur toughs brought, ta catch tha angel. She hadda daughter that was sick. Did yeh fix her, like yeh promised?"

Michael laughed, a tinkly Disney laugh. "Oh, _**Dagon**_... we simply can't go around just healing random children. Where would that get us?"

"But she'll die."

"Oh, probably. But that's where the grace of God comes in, of course." Then the line went dead; Michael had hung up.

They held the buzzing handset for a second or two longer. Sure, the grace of God – the ineffable love and unknowable divine plan that should suffice as comfort for any person who was otherwise beyond help.

Lord Dagon remembered the waves closing over their head, so far above their frenzied reaching hands... four hundred and thirty-one years ago. The grace of God had been there as well, even as water had filled their lungs.

For what good it had done Dagon at the time. Turns out there was something else in the darkness under the waves, and it was that thing (squirming with a thousand tentacles, burbling with the madness of the deeps) that had answered Dagon's desperate salt-bound screams for help.

They dropped the black plastic handset back onto the phone and stood up.

The hospital wasn't far, once you got out of Hell. Although technically you could come out of Hell's front door wherever on Earth you felt like (assuming you were both authorized and permitted to find it), the better to facilitate access to the temptations of all humanity, this was still just a few streets away.

So it was less than an hour later before Dagon slouched by a white wall outside of a hospital room.

They'd tried to make the children's wing cheery. There were carefully done murals of creatures who were very nearly copyrighted characters. Little bright-carpeted play rooms were here and there, filled with ancient donated toys.

It was best not to think about the fact that sometimes these were the last toys someone might get to play with... ever.

Dagon, a spot of dirty shadow against the well-scrubbed faded linoleum and the white paint in the hallway, was ignored by every passing doctor and nurse – although sometimes a pair of large eyes in a tiny pinched face riding in a wheelchair or on a hospital bed would turn and look up at them as they were pushed by.

"Ther's a p'rate!" chirped one little person who clutched a teddy bear taller and chubbier than she might ever get to be. "A fish p'rate!"

"Sadie hush, that's not very nice to say," soothed their carer absently. Dagon sketched a salute and gave a fanged smile that made the tiny human bounce with glee before they were wheeled out of sight.

Then Dagon scrubbed at their eyes with both hands, swamped with emotion.

Temptation, sure. That stuff was easy. And the Files – somebody had to take care of them. Somebody had to locate all the information as needed when specific mortals were to be targeted. Hell knew everything – and it was Dagon's job to collate and store everything. Somebody had to. They'd always been good at it; the Dark Lady of Doona had said so.

But this place was worse than Hell in a number of ways.

After a certain point, the damned tended to reach a sense of pragmatism about their circumstances. They'd usually done quite a few very naughty things to deserve what was happening to them and, deep down in their souls, they understood the punishment to be just.

In this hospital ward, no one deserved the agony and suffering they endured. The whole place stank of misery, of hopelessness – because the ones who were able to retain their hope were usually the ones who were wheeled back out alive.

Just look through the window, Dagon thought to themselves. The little window on the door of the room of the child of the woman who had been with Dagon and the two massive angels last night when they had kidnapped Aziraphale.

Dagon looked.

There wasn't much to see; there was a restroom apparently to the left on the way in, and that made a little cubby toward the back.

There was a hospital bed, but Dagon could only see the last meter of it. There was a little lump in the covers at the extreme left of the visible portion of the bed... that might be created by the two small feet of an occupant.

At the very end of the bed, bottom half in a chair but resting her upper half onto the mattress, slept the mother herself. Her head was pillowed on her left arm and her right hand reached out to touch her daughter's feet even in her sleep. As if to reassure the unconscious mind that she was still there.

(A piercing memory of a haggard face surrounded by lank ginger hair on a pillow damp with sweat, and of the clammy hand clasped in both of theirs: "Yur gonna haveta run, my love. When I die I cain' protect yeh from them anymore. Run all tha way ta tha sea an' beyond, if yeh must!")

Of course she'd be exhausted. Dagon had watched the angels chase her down several streets, whips of glory raging in their hands, instilling a proper unfeigned terror into her before they drove her towards the door of the book shop.

Dagon had watched with their own back still aching. Stinging. Burning. As it had for weeks.

The demon sighed and leaned their head against the door. Even unconscious, the mother's mind radiated waves of guilt and shame – two emotions that any of the Infernal Host would be attuned to detect.

From the little body in the bed there was no feeling save one: a dark, sinister, and despicably joyful vibration that passed through its veins and arteries with every pulse.

This was the joy of the smoke-stacks pumping carcinogens into the clear blue sky.

This was the exultation of the gurgling pipe oozing unfiltered chemical waste into the river.

This was the unmitigated glee of the roaring saw-blades shredding ancient trees in the Amazon.

Maybe Dagon wasn't a proper demon, because sensing that murderous merriment made them want to retch until their midsection ached.

They turned their head; in the nearest play area one chair was occupied. Not much of the individual could be seen around the corner, only a thin elbow in a long black sleeve. A skeletal hand held the edge of a Highlights magazine, open to a "Spot the Differences!" puzzle.

In the crook of the elbow rested the long shaft of a scythe. The slender razor-edged blade hung like a stilled pendulum over the linoleum of the hallway.

"Na today," Dagon told that dark-clad figure.

YOU KNOW THAT I'M IN NO PARTICULAR RUSH, it answered. I'M EVENTUAL FOR EVERYONE.

The demon nodded once, smartly.

Okay. I can't save everybody here, they thought – but maybe I can finagle **this** one out...

They reached their mind towards the self-destructive delight in the child's veins: "heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it's off to death we go!"

(This is not really the dark song the blast-cells sang as they worked their anti-magic, but it's close enough for you to get the gist.)

"Oh really?" Dagon asked that busy congregation in the silence of the soul.

Billions of little voices answered: "Yes! We are all-powerful! We hold dominion over the entire circulatory system of this body!"

"Oh, sure. Quite. Yeh seem **very** big an' mighty. So much so, in fact..."

For the first time there was a sense of uncertainty. "Yes?"

Dagon pitched their reply at their most persuasively tempting. "I'll just **bet** yeh couldna all fit in tha kid's throat at once."

And the next few minutes were very busy indeed. Monitors went off, miniature wailing sirens of distress. The woman woke up in terror and tears, ripping off the oxygen mask, pulling the spasming little body out of bed. Dagon stepped aside for the nurses to rush through.

The word "choking!" passed from breath to breath around the room; someone thought to render the Heimlich maneuver, then turn the girl-child upside down over their forearms and let her spew the rest of the red-black noisome gunk onto the floor tiles.

Dagon rested the back of their head against the wall, careful not to let their shoulders touch it.

"Mama!" a broken voice cried out in the room... but stronger now, despite its fear.

Dagon reached out with their mind again as they turned to look through the window through the very corner of one eye.

The girl was in her mother's arms and both were sobbing – but Dagon could see and feel the blush of healthy color and vitality rising again on her skin.

She would live. The cancer was gone. The child would live.

Dagon cringed against the wall again, mouth and lungs filled with the scent and taste and weight of salt water memory, overwhelmed.

The grace of God.

Dagon's first miracle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that I have a bottle of cheap wine in me, let me flesh out my endnotes.
> 
> * I apologize for the delay; Bad Things(TM) have been happening to me. Worse than the laundry, amazingly enough. (And the laundry has also gotten worse. When it rains, it pours.) But I was finally able to get this done, thank the Muse. I have edited as best I can with my fried brainmeats but if I've missed a pronoun (Aziraphale should be he/his then she/her; Dagon should remain they/them throughout) or made any other grammatical errors please let me know.
> 
> Hopefully I'll be able to get on the next chapter sooner.
> 
> * I think I decided on Dagon as our jailer because a) they are more of a blank slate than Beelzebub, I thought (which provides more opportunities when you're trying to stay somewhat within canon), and b) Hastur is really too creepy for me. As in, seriously effectively creepy. Good on the makeup, wardrobe, and actor for all combining into that character so well. Whereas Dagon with their shiny scales and sharp fangs and big moray eyes and long hair... *happy sigh* ...is such a dreamboat of a demon.
> 
> * My boyfriend likes mackerel sushi. I'm not yet decided on it because the smell/taste is very pungent, but it's also kinda memorable and meaningful? Like, it's too extreme to be "enjoyable" for me yet, but the very extremity makes it worth having? I lack the words to describe.
> 
> * I really like Aziraphale's mental gymnastics to keep himself functioning. It seems to be well-suited for survival situations like this. But everything carries a cost, and what will the price be for this later on? Hmmm...
> 
> * "won the nanosecond races again" is of course a callback to Seven Minutes In Hell.
> 
> * Hmmmmm.... Dagon, Lord of the Files and Master of Torments appears to have a lot of damage. Weird when alone around male-shaped people, builds their personal space in the Stacks like a fortress, apparent mild to moderate PTSD regarding their death-circumstances... Hmmm.
> 
> * Dagon's accent (which I am hating myself for having developed but what the fuck, I love pain and all) is meant to be kinda a back-woods Gaelic remnant from their birth and raising. They can affect a more proper pronunciation (thus being able to say "you" instead of "yeh" when giving their demonic pep talk in Episode 6 of the show) but generally don't otherwise care to try to impress.
> 
> * The Dark Lady of Doona is [Grace O'Malley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_O%27Malley) who strikes me as a very interesting pirate.
> 
> * I've been reading "Split-Second Persuasion" by Kevin Dutton lately and Aziraphale is tapping into several of the various methods it explains during the course of this conversation. Then again, Lord Dagon as kind of a kicked puppy inside their own pocket dimension is quite eager for any sort of positive contact and is very fond of older female role-models. Hmm...
> 
> * Hmmm. Dagon keeps giving glances that suggest they may be (or think they are) hip to a number of concepts that Aziraphale keeps soft-balling at them. Hmmm.
> 
> * Back to "Split-Second Persuasion" and other books like it: people tend to think better of those who have asked for favors. We want to like the people we've invested in. And being the first to "touch" another person is a sign that we see them as a social superior. (Same thing happens in monkeys and lots of other animals; we groom the Alpha.) Aziraphale knows this and is trying to utilize it very carefully just now... but did she forget that while she was unconscious, Dagon was trying to clean her wound? Hmmmmmmmmmmm.
> 
> * Wonder what's up with Dagon's back. Hmmm.
> 
> * Squirming many-tentacled burbling things in the deep are referenced for Dagon's roots in Lovecraftian mythos.
> 
> * Somebody has to handle the information, Dagon thinks. Somebody has to straighten it out and organize it. And we all remember referencing Somebody before... hmmmm.
> 
> * ["War is War and Hell is Hell"](https://www.natfinn.com/war-is-war-and-hell-is-hell/) and in general the Children's Cancer Ward is worse than both.
> 
> * And what do we say to the God of Death? NOT TODAY. (OFC he's reading a Highlights. What else is there to do in the hospital waiting rooms?)
> 
> * The Muse and I reference the dwarven "Heigh-ho" mining song so that you think of cancerous blood cells as kind of a cute and disgustingly up-beat Nazi army bent on the destruction of a child's body. Think of a G-Rated version of "The Wall".
> 
> * I'd like to think that if you could just convince all cancerous blast cells to meet up right behind the tonsils it'd be possible to vomit them out and then you'd be healed. I think that would be a cool miracle. So that's how it's gonna work in my universe.


	5. Endure Not Yet A Breach But An Expansion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After all, hadn't something like that that been how Crowley and Aziraphale themselves had gotten started?
> 
> If nothing else developed, hatred of another person was still a strong emotion for them.
> 
> And finally: Michael had admitted there were at least fears that Aziraphale or Crowley might be able to somehow escape... and where there was smoke there would be fire.
> 
> Crowley was quite familiar with fire, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's title comes from John Donne's "Valediction: Forbidden Mourning".

Crowley decided the most irritatingly twee thing about his prison was the great silver eye-bolt – and how his chains magically untangled themselves to accommodate whichever position he chose.

So he could turn around and face the other direction (if he wanted to pretend there was a change in scenery), walk around the bolt at the radius of their lengths, even roll on the ground if the mood struck him: the platinum chains never snarled up. They simply rearranged themselves however necessary, even passing through each other as formlessly as tendrils of smoke – until you pulled on them again, and they proved how solid they were.

Can't give the demon a simple cushion for the bare rock or even a blanket, oh no, **never**... but we can use a good-sized miracle to make sure that he doesn't get himself strung up like a hyper dachshund on a leash around a tree.

The wind was second most irritating. There was no reason for it whatsoever. This wasn't a real mountain range. This wasn't even a real sky or real clouds or a real sun. Weather conditions were completely unnecessary.

Oh sure, it may seem a bit hypocritical – after all, Crowley had been pleased to have a nice refreshing breeze occur at unscheduled intervals in his own pocket-dimension, and the general atmosphere had been negligibly warmer than this one.

But this was on a different level. The constant gale howled over the tops of the jagged rocks, reverberating from mountain to mountain, building eddies deep in the valleys that shot up at random and created such a hideous cacophony that the demon began to think that he could hear voices in it.

They were just on the edge of understanding; they fought him out of his sleep, denying him rest.

And he started to think that if he sat there cross-legged on the freezing stone, citrine eyes closed (the better to focus, of course) that the voices of the wind would tell him how to escape.

And he started to think that if he had not actually gone mad climbing the Tower to Heaven... it might be happening now.

The third most irritating thing was that there was no time – or at least, no sense of its passage. Despite being immortal, this was still disturbing. Even before the creation of the planet Earth there had been a sense of causality, before and after, the increasing entropy that marked regular change in the universe, et cetera.

But here in Michael's shitty little playpen the hazy shrouded sun never moved from its spot (as if stuck there on a push-pin, Crowley thought morosely) and the clouds were uniformly diaphanous enough that you truly couldn't tell one from another even if they **had** moved around.

Still. He figured it'd been around three days. Sounded like a good number.

He'd done the minor miracles of fixing his outfit and healing his palms (the major miracles like oh, teleporting to any other mountain and leaving the chains behind were of course denied him). Currently he sat cross-legged, eyes closed, listening to the keening tempest – so felt but not heard the change when Michael reappeared in this their interior realm.

"Michael," he intoned, not bothering to immediately open his eyes. "We have to stop meeting like this. People will say we're in love."

"You're obnoxious," they said as they climbed the last part of the rise to the summit. A tiny differential in air-pressure let Crowley know that they'd summoned their gilded rococo stool once more. So this **was** a social call.

"Wasn't that a 'Silence of the Lambs' quote? Great movie, although the book was better. Anthony Hopkins was too camp to be properly scary as far as I'm concerned. While I've never eaten anyone's liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti, I once had mussels and a forgettable white with Aziraphale around two hundred and sixty years ago... I figure the texture is similar."

"I'm not here for idle chatter about human things," Michael answered, sitting down and arranging their clothing fastidiously. "Your little naked-time friend Aziraphale has already started to crack; he's told us about how you two make and maintain Appearances. So it's been decided that we're to check in with you every three days and force you to interact, to confirm you haven't escaped and left an Appearance in your place."

Crowley's face split in a vicious grin as he took a few milliseconds to process everything Michael had just admitted – and it wasn't even Christmas!

First, if they weren't here for idle chatter, why sit down? Even if they had to validate he was still himself and not an Appearance it was easy enough to step up, ask him a complex maths question and then vanish – but no, we've got to flutter down onto a disgustingly ornate bench so we can socialize but not admit it.

(Did Michael have any idea how much they lied? the most microscopic voice in the back of Crowley's brain asked. It was practically with every other sentence. Did they do it on purpose?... or were they so accustomed to lying to others and perhaps to themselves that they barely felt it anymore when they did?)

Maybe in this setup of soul-dimension imprisonment the jailer is also somewhat jailed... and they hadn't yet figured it out; this was an angle Crowley could possibly exploit.

He mentally encased "little naked-time friend" in about two thousand pairs of mocking sarcasm quotes and filed it away for later reference; any situation Michael found uncomfortable was a lock pick he could try to use.

Also the demon thought that the likelihood of Aziraphale "cracking" was a percentage comfortably close to zero – underneath the marshmallow facade his angel was a substance harder than diamond. It was clever as anything to go ahead and trade (for it was an intentional and advantageous trade and not some accidental lapse, Crowley was certain) the knowledge regarding Appearances to get whatever he could for it; if other demons or angels hadn't sorted out something similar already there was no reason to believe they wouldn't or couldn't shortly.

Plus, forcing their jailers to come in and interact with them every three days maintained the intra-personal connection. These pocket-dimensions were not oubliettes in which the sinners could be left to safely rot, forgotten for the rest of eternity – but on-going projects with repeating requirements of interaction that would eventually cement into some sort of relationship.

After all, hadn't something like that that been how Crowley and Aziraphale themselves had gotten started?

If nothing else developed, hatred of another person was still a strong emotion for them.

And finally: Michael had admitted there were at least fears that Aziraphale or Crowley might be able to somehow escape... and where there was smoke there would be fire.

Crowley was quite familiar with fire, after all.

With barely a pause for all of this present-unwrapping, Crowley said "In the time since our last charming interlude I've had quite a while to think, so I was trying to figure out what was wrong with **YOU**, Michael. And I think I've got it nailed down: you've never ever loved anything."

"I'm an angel; we love everything." The response was practically automatic.

"Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, but nothing **in **_**particular**_. And being finite beings makes loving 'everything' a bit academic, doesn't it? Whereas only God can love everything specifically and personally."

"You know nothing about love." Nonetheless infinitesimal lines appeared and deepened around the corners of Michael's lips and in the center of their forehead.

"I know more than you, because I've actually felt it. I've given and received it. I have loved one angel to the heights and depths and breadths of my soul; I have been loved in return so completely, every part of me, every aspect and shade. Every character trait about myself I adored or despised – his regard made them all precious to me. Reflected in his tenderness and his passion I saw myself in a way I never could before. For the first time in my existence I felt truly treasured, truly beautiful."

Michael opened their mouth to respond but Crowley had the mic and wasn't about to give it up.

"I'll admit, all this adorable play-act with the kidnapping and having to storm the Tower and then getting sucked into this barren space – it actually **did** distract me for a few hours. But as soon as I sat down in the relative quiet to think again all the truth came back to me, that there is no separating me from Aziraphale. Ever."

And forgive me John Donne, for mangling your words, thought the demon even as he threw the lines into Michael's face:  
  
"If we be two, we are two so  
As stiff twin compasses are two;  
His soul, the fixed foot, makes no show  
To move, but doth, if my other do.  
And though his in the center sit,  
Yet when my other far doth roam,  
His leans and hearkens after it,"

(and here his eyebrows arched and his voice grew lascivious, provoking a dark angry blush from the angel)

"And **grows **_**erect**_, as mine comes home.  
Such wilt he be to me, who must,  
Like the other foot, obliquely run;  
His firmness makes my circle just,  
And makes me end where I begun."

"What does that have to do with love or God or anything?!" Michael spat.

"Plenty!" Crowley roared back. "Did you not read or hear anything the mortals have produced in the last six millennia? The minute they were ejected from the Garden of Eden they could barely **stop** thinking about God! Wondering about Her, trying to understand Her, trying to find their own ways back to Her.

"They were the ones who said that God was a circle whose center was everywhere but circumference was nowhere. We didn't come up with that monumental breakthrough, **they** did! And if God is everywhere, Michael, that means that She is here even inside of **YOU**."  
  
The angel sat back, nostrils pinched, remote.

"And that's part of the problem, innit Michael..." His voice took on a caressing, almost teasing tone. "God is love, and when you surrender to love you surrender in many ways to God Herself – but **you**, you mighty general, you... You've followed orders but you've never **surrendered **yourself to anyone or anything. Not even to God."

"I've heard quite enough of this filth," the seraph said, and stood. The golden Baroque bench vanished.

"Wait!"  
  
"Speak civil and swift."

"You've got to go water my plants."

The noise that Michael produced in reply was very nearly a rude one.

"No, I mean it. They're locked up in my flat and you've kidnapped their only two caretakers. Nobody else can reach them and no one else knows they're there. This isn't like letting random children die of cancer," Crowley said, and was astonished to see Michael flinch. How'd **that** remark hit home?

He pressed on: "If you don't go to my flat and water them, _**YOU**_ will be murdering them yourself in the most cruel way possible, as they will suffer the entire time that they are dying because of your neglect."

"And that's all you want."

Crowley leaned back, his aquiline features carefully urbane and remote. "I think that's about all I could reasonably _**get**_, don't you?"

Michael glared at him warily a moment longer, then nodded once. "I will do it – because it is the right thing to do, and not because **you** told me to."  
  
"Whatever," Crowley sighed. The seraph vanished.

He sat on the stone for an hour after, his eyes vacant, his mind a blank. There was something in these conversations, something beyond the regular former-sibling sniping. Something beyond even the Great War and the choosing of opposite sides. Something Michael was seeking. What was it?

Maybe they didn't know what they were seeking, or even **that** they were seeking.

I hadn't known that I'd wanted something until I'd chatted up an enemy soldier in boredom just to find he'd given away his weapon to a young couple in need. And boy howdy, look how that'd turned out.

"How do we begin to covet, Clarice?" Crowley breathed into the howling wind. "We begin by coveting what we see every day... hmmm."

He tilted his head. It seemed that there was music in the voice of the gale now, words being sung that would soon become clear.

John Donne, bless him. He wrote of God and of love and of sex; of course Michael had no clue regarding any of his work.

These screaming mountains: a prison cell within a celestial jailer. "We are met, and cloistered in these living walls of jet..."

Crowley giggled for several minutes, then repressed his laughter most sternly. His lips trembled.

I really must be losing my mind, he thought.

"God, if you're really here... please help me. I'll never be able to do this alone."

He listened, and turned his focus further inward.

You are nothing. You are a tiny insignificant speck. You are worthless. You are a bother. Everyone hates you. They would crush you as soon as look at you. You are lower than the lowest dogs in the street...

Meanwhile, Michael had manifested back in Heaven long enough to check the World map. Northern hemisphere, England, London, posh apartment complex, upper floor, this flat.

And with a thought they were there, standing just inside the door. Demons might have to break and enter; angels were ever-present. Michael walked into the next room through the open slot of the concrete door, not touching anything.

To the right were the splintered remnants of a throne-like chair, a massive golden desk, a small portable computer. The windows straight ahead were damaged; a broken machine lay forgotten next to them.

In rooms farther to the right water dripped some place, slowly.

To the left and through another doorway Michael could see the plants. Thank the Lord, they thought sourly, and gingerly picked their way across the floor to them.

Standing among them on the plain cement floor, Michael could feel the Love in this room, slowly fading but not yet entirely gone.

And they could feel the disdain and distrust of the plants around them, focused upon them.

"That's gratitude for you."

Mists rose up from the soil in each pot and watered the plants, as they had in the Garden of Eden before the birth of rain.

The disdain and distrust in the atmosphere did not diminish in the slightest, although some of the general anxiety eased.

"I'll be back in three days," Michael announced aloud, and immediately felt funny for it.

The seraph began to mince back toward the door, taking careful steps over the wreckage. Then felt funny again. Why make such a fuss when a simple miracle would...?

As could so often occur among angels, thought became deed: in a blink the room was righted. The golden desk was whole, as was the machines put back on it. The cracks in the windows had healed. The upholstery of the chair was mended. A pencil sketch of a smiling woman in an ornate frame was restored to its place on the wall. The floor was now clear of debris.

Although the furnishing weren't what they would have chosen, Michael felt a sense of satisfaction at putting them back in order.

But still that drip, from the other room to the right. The seraph detoured down the hallway; at the end of it was a dove-shaped stone lectern, its wings spread to receive the Word of God upon its back. Michael bent slightly toward it... yes, it still smelled of burned church.

They passed around it into the room behind.

The demon's bedroom.

The damage was worse in here, because there was slightly more to damage. The bed and sheets and pillows and blanket had all been shredded apart as if by giant claws or fangs.

Michael stood in the doorway and didn't dare to breathe.

They had watched **everything**, these last two and a half years.

To the point that Gabriel would come and tap them on the shoulder at their desk in Heaven, startling them out of their concentration. "Hey... cut it out already, there's surely nothing to be discovered during... this stuff," he'd said, eyes carefully averted from the hole in reality through which Michael stared.

"You never know," they would answer absently. "We can't leave anything to chance."

Eventually Gabriel quit trying, so Michael kept watching as the angel and the demon ate food and drank wine and took off their clothes and put parts of their bodies into each other's bodies.

The two of them just kept doing it, over and over. All sorts of ways. As if it meant something. When neither of them could engender life like the mortals did, even if they had the biologically complementary parts at the time.

What were they trying to do?

What did they benefit from it?

Because it looked...

They would moan, and pant, and curse occasionally. They would cry out.

They made facial expressions that looked like pain. Sometimes tears would slip out of their eyes.

Sometimes the other would press their lips to those tears and drink them away.

Sometimes they bit each other or raked their nails on each other, even to the point of blood. This seemed to intensify the interaction in some unspecified way.

And it made their bodies sweaty. Sticky, sometimes. One or the other would occasionally complain in laughing, exhausted tones, of having to clean up.

Sometimes, one or the other would lick it up... the substances their bodies produced.

And Michael watched, motionless, expressionless. If asked, the seraph would have described their main emotion as one of horror, of disgust... yet they would seem strangely untouched by distress.

Perhaps seeing it put them in shock.

But they kept watching, with their penetrating dark gaze. Barely blinking. Never breathing.

Nonetheless, despite or perhaps because of this fascination, they were the ones to figure out the concept of pocket-dimensions: the act of tapping into a corner of the soul that could be bigger than the self.

They had glimpsed it in a split-second view through the portal in Crowley's chest as he'd turned inside-out to go into it... dark mountains against a midnight sky. Suitable for the interior of a demon's soul.

Gabriel was truly horrified, when they'd brought him the idea; Michael had studied their expression and resolved to imitate it in front of a mirror. It was very expressive. It said "I am horrified" every bit as loud as if spoken – and that was a useful tool to have in the corporate Host.

"No," he'd said in tones of utter dismay. "No, oh my Lord. Who would want to do such a thing? It's disgusting."

"It's perfect," they'd answered. "We couldn't keep either of them in either Heaven _**or**_ Hell. Can you imagine the riot if either escaped, or the eternal tension if they didn't? But they can't escape from inside someone's own soul. No one else even has to know they're there."

"Well _**I'm**_ not going to do it," he'd replied, his hand fluttering to the vicinity of his tie-pin. Michael had felt a brief spike of contempt. Like anyone else ever promoted to the point of uselessness Gabriel had the privilege of squeamishness at the mention of the dirty but necessary jobs.

"I never said you had to. I'll do it."

And that was the most discussion they'd ever had on the issue. Michael managed the rest through their back-channels; an acceptable opposite partner was found in Lord Dagon. Lord in name only, this highest member of the New Ones was nonthreatening and powerless enough that they caused Michael no distraction from the task at hand.

Michael planned the kidnapping of Aziraphale. Michael ordered the lower floors cleared, via a disaster-scenario evacuation test. Everyone had performed perfectly.

Of course. It was Heaven.

And Gabriel had been there at the end, had tried to put his own official stamp on things and "help" in his own way.

But when it came to war crimes – these requisite acts of dubious morality – Michael was undisputed commander-in-chief. When they gave orders in these specific events, Gabriel did as told.

So why were they now standing stock still in the doorway of the bedroom, as if turned to stone like the dove lectern?

I've never seen it from this angle, thought Michael. I always looked down on them from above.

(The maddening drip... drip... drip... continued from the vicinity of the bathroom – then cut off abruptly as Michael restored everything in that room to miraculous wholeness with a subconscious slash of irritation.)

But now I'm here, they continued the thought.

On the same level.

As the bed.

And **now** it was whole... the black satin sheets (that Crowley had despaired with humor in his eyes, and Aziraphale had cleaned with his own minor miracles), the pillows, the charcoal colored duvet cover.

The wrought iron platform that held the mattress.

The wrought iron head-board, that both in their own hours had reached up to clench with trembling hands, to brace against or pull towards, from above or below.

As they had climaxed. As they had gasped and sighed and kissed yearning mouths, as if those lips held the air their lungs craved.

Michael felt within themselves the urge to touch the bed. They knew this apartment, every centimeter of it (that was even now setting itself to rights at the other end, past the statue of "wrestling" angels that still made Aziraphale giggle every time he walked by it, into the kitchen where the refrigerator and the butcher-block island were surprised to be parted once more, where the drywall rebuilt itself, where Michael's power of miracles spiraled out as their focus narrowed and their control weakened) but it was here, here where most of it had happened, the most inexplicable...

(the most ineffable?)

They had watched the two beings mate on practically every horizontal surface in this flat and half of the vertical ones, but it was here it was here it was here

that the two of them had slept, carelessly

(vulnerably)

in an astonishing lapse of security

(just that once, only a week or so ago)

tangled and half atop each other

head on chest

hand in hair

eyes closed

at rest

...

And the two had stayed that way for three hours and twenty-eight minutes.

Michael's hands curled into empty fists.

The seraph wanted to touch the bed.

Even with just two fingertips.

...

Michael flung themselves back into Heaven, before the temptation became too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *rolls out her shoulders, cracks all her knuckles at once*
> 
> Somewhat normal service has been restored. I wanna thank everyone for their beautiful comments on the last post, although I worry I derailed everyone with my comments about the Bad Things(TM), which have now returned to being the Occasionally Bad But Mostly Irritating Things(TM). Meanwhile I added lots more to last chapter's end notes, so please give them a glance.
> 
> Onto the current chapter!
> 
> * I love it that Crowley has Hannibal Lecter on the brain, perhaps trying to see some kinship with him as a weird-eyed evil thing chained up in solitary confinement, when the rest of the planet is all like [Mushu_v("I think my bunny-slippers just ran for cover").](https://media1.tenor.com/images/fa1325ac157392e40228f4d0bf0e313d/tenor.gif?itemid=4948931)
> 
> * Michael really does lie, like every other sentence. I especially loved how they give the very impressive "You're stuck here forever or at least until we destroy you" speech at the beginning that is immediately contradicted by Dagon in the next chapter going "nooooo no no no, we're not gonna even try to figure out how to destroy you, can you imagine how upset everyone would get?" Bottom line: I adore them as an unreliable narrator.
> 
> * ["""""LiTtLe NaKeD-tImE FrIeNd"""""](https://www.dailydot.com/wp-content/uploads/57f/6c/9055ebfa31c8550e-e1494349501884.jpg)
> 
> * Crowley has made a study of human works about God and Love for the last 6 millennia, and has found quite a bit of overlap in the most surprising places. He'd never thought about any of that while he was an angel, and neither had any other angel, and that's part of their problem...
> 
> * Michael seems distressed at the thought that God might be inside them. Hmmm.
> 
> * While Crowley is thinking of Hannibal, Michael starts to give off more of an "American Psycho" sort of vibe by the end... hmmm...


	6. The Universe Would Turn To A Mighty Stranger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I so swear.”
> 
> “By **what** do yeh swear?”
> 
> God was not to be mentioned here, the angel knew.
> 
> “By anything you wish. Upon my own name.”
> 
> “Nah.” Dagon bit their lip. “On that of yur lover. Swear on _**his**_ name.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Iesu Chresto, here I go again, trying to edit around half a bottle of a cheap white zinfandel. Heaven help us all. Everything done right in here is the fault of Kyrios Muse; everything I get wrong... you should tell me about in the comments.
> 
> Additional content warning: references are made to a character _possibly_ experiencing sexual abuse as a child. Nothing is confirmed and there are no graphic details, but please continue to curate your own experience for your best safety and mental/emotional health.

Lord Dagon was back in Aziraphale's prison before an entire day had passed.

Aziraphale had spent an hour or so after they'd first left, exploring the castle. In short: it was weird. As weird as Sleeping Beauty's castle, where things were left as they had been set but all the people had vanished.

There'd been a single skillet of fresh sliced bacon and two newly-cracked eggs on the cold stove in the kitchen – as if the cook had been doing up for one and simply stepped away to answer the phone or something. The stove itself was big enough to serve dozens but only a single eye had wood laid beneath it in preparation for the fire.

The angel, quite fancying a nibble now that her relative health had been restored (and her newly emptied stomach had recovered sufficient to remind her it was newly emptied), lit the fire with a minor miracle and fried the breakfast.

Once her belly was fed, she made her way directly up the tallest tower where she figured she might find the nicest bedroom, and so she did.

The top room was really three or four with minor separations. The four-poster bed looked through open windows onto a balcony; the openings could be shuttered off in case of heavy storms. To the right there was a large bathroom; the tub would be filled by bucket after bucket of hot water drawn up a pulley system from a cauldron in the kitchen. There was a garderobe closet, where a very simple toilet hole flushed with a spare bucket of cold water and probably emptied directly into the ocean far below. The room was hung with bundles of lavender and sage that were still fairly fresh.

Then on the other side of the bedroom were two small doors. One led into a small clothes closet. Gratefully Aziraphale was able to change into clothing more suiting her current form: a pair of fitted trousers, calf-high boots, a loose white blouse and a bodice that laced over it for bosom-support without otherwise inhibiting movement.

The other little room was barely bigger than the clothes closet, but long and wide enough for a single-person pallet on a raised platform; there were drawers under the platform and at the end a porcelain guzunder with a lid sat clean and empty but within reach. This room had one single shuttered window for airflow, too small for an adult to pass through and barred besides. The angel noticed that the door to this little set of quarters could be dead-bolted from within.

And, although every single room was immaculately clean, upon bending close to the pallet mattress Aziraphale spied one single hair upon the linen pillowcase.

It was long, and ginger.

Aha...

She didn't bother exploring anything else. Down in the kitchen she found a small satchel, filled it with a few cheese wedges cut from a larger wheel, some apples in a bin, and topped it with a water-skin filled with fresh water.

Then she went back to the beach-side, where the storm perpetually threatened but did not break.

She mentally reorganized her bookshop while she waited, dipping into her picnic lunch and watching the waves break on the sand.

She didn't have to wait long.

Without a word or sound Lord Dagon manifested again, further south on the beach – but the entire realm rang like a muted bell upon the re-entrance of its creator. Aziraphale would have heard it even in the tower, anywhere in this pocket-dimension.

Of course Crowley's dimension had done the same... but since they for the most part entered and left it together, it was ages since Aziraphale had actually heard (or felt, as it had almost a physical shivering component) the sound.

Dagon stared out to sea for the better part of an hour, then vanished again.

Aziraphale mentally shrugged.

That first day, Dagon came to stare at the ocean four times.

Aziraphale sat on a large flat rock amid the dunes, and watched, and ate her picnic lunch.

At the end of the fourth time, Dagon turned and climbed the dunes. Aziraphale readied her smile.

"Yeh havena come ta try ta talk ta me, I noticed."

"You know where I am," she answered sweetly. "I figured that if you wanted to talk, you would come to me. I don't want to become one of the ones you're running from."

"I see yeh found things in tha castle. Tha clothen."

"Oh yes! It was wonderful to spot a few little items that fit properly. But, ahhh – I didn't really look much else around. I was wanting to wait for you."

The demon tilted their head.

"Well... walking through a place that is so perfectly detailed but doesn't have any people in it... it's a little bit spooky."

"Spooky?" Dagon looked like they were trying to decide whether or not to laugh.

"Well, yes, a bit! I mean I can tell you rendered it with quite a bit of affection, to have remembered it so perfectly... down to even what clothes were folded in the closet... but..."

"But it's na yur place, nor yur affections."

"Not yet, no. Would you be willing to show it to me?"

And she did the big blue eyes thing that worked so well on Crowley – and watched Dagon thaw, just a tiny increment more.

"Come on then," said the demon. "Yeh can leave yur food here; na other creature here ta eat it but yeh. It'll be safe enough."

"And the storm?" Aziraphale asked, brushing the sand from her backside with quick hands on the linen trousers, following Lord Dagon up the path.

"Wun break. Might na ever break. I havena decided yet."

Dagon stopped at the drawbridge that crossed the dry moat, the first human-made features of the castle.

"Dunno if this pile of rocks ever had a proper name; Doohoma's around here somewhere, an' so that's what Captain'd say – 'Niamh, head us on ta Doohoma.' "

"Niamh?" She echoed it back, pronouncing it like "neeve".

The demon flashed Aziraphale a quick look, then smiled. "Look at tha moat. Ten meters across, an' nearly five deep. Studded with timbers pounded inta tha sand an' cut sharp; we hadda replace surprisenly few of them every few years. When tha tide comes in, it floods most of tha way, but it's na ever safe enough ta swim it, really."

"So this was quite a defensible place, then."

"I think she preferred it more because it was so close ta Doona. She liked ta go attack tha castle every now an' again, when tha mood struck."

Aziraphale floated close to Dagon's left elbow and evinced every sign of interest and engagement as she was shown the tiny stables, the fresh water cisterns, the kitchen (again), the barracks. There was, amazingly enough, a small library of about three dozen books in the heart of the castle proper.

"There was none for readen like my Captain," said Dagon proudly. "She was quite learned. I hear that some time after I died she even met an' spoke Latin with that Queen Elizabeth. One powerful woman ta another."

"My goodness... Did you ever get to..."

"See her again?"

Dagon bit their lip, and stood in silence a long moment. The surf pounded outside the thick stone walls. "Nah. I kinda wish I coulda... then again, I'm glad na ta. Yeh understand."

The angel understood.

It was inevitable that they climbed the tallest tower of the castle. Dagon walked into the spacious bedroom as if it was their own.

"I was impressed to find such... modern fittings, in the bathroom here. I can imagine that after a few weeks at sea all one would want is a hot bath and a good rest in a bed that didn't move..."

"She was good ta her people, even tha servants. Much easier ta hang buckets of hot water on a pulley rope an' have tha same dog-run that turned tha roasts used ta raise them up ta her quarters, than ta have helpers try ta carry them up tha stairs. She considered them, all of them, an' they loved her for it."

Aziraphale sat on a corner of the bed, resting her temple against the solid wooden bedpost. "And **you** loved her for it," she corrected.

Dagon, their back turned, opened the little door that separated the tiny room of the pallet from the main bedroom. They leaned their arm against the door-frame to look inside.

"My mam died when I was fourteen," they said, so softly that Aziraphale leaned forward to hear better. "She couldna protect me anymore from my da an' my older brother an' my uncle, once she was in tha ground. So on her death-bed she told me ta run. Ta tha sea an' beyond, if I must, ta be free.

"I ran ta tha docks, dressed in my brother's outgrown cast-offs. I snuck onta tha biggest ship there. I lasted a day before someone caught me stealen food from tha galley."

"And they took you before the Dark Lady of Doona," the angel said, enthralled despite herself.

Dagon turned a bit at that, and smiled a little smile.

"An' they took me before tha Dark Lady of Doona, who was a woman as old as my mam an' barely taller than me, then – but straight of carriage, bright of eye. Unbowed by her griefs an' tha weight of tha years.

"When they cast me down on ta tha deck before her, she said 'Aren yeh lucky ta have wound up here, lil one?'"

"Were you?"

"Yeh. Captain went on ta say how she'd needed a cabin boy. An' I told her I wasna a boy." Dagon laughed. "She grinned an' said 'Better yet!' She called me her 'cabin joy'."

Her 'cabin joy', thought Aziraphale. Dear Somebody.

"What year was this?" she said instead.

"Tha year of our Lord 1569," Dagon murmured. "Nearly four years after she earned tha name, 'Tha Dark Lady of Doona.'"

Aziraphale did the math. "So you died when you were thirty-three."

"Yeh. Haven worked my way from cabin joy ta first mate; by tha end I was doen tha books for her entire fleet as well as her castle Rockfleet an' her family farms."

"You've always been good with numbers."

Dagon turned away from the compliment, gazing back into the little closet sleeping area.

"How long was that your room?" Aziraphale asked after a moment.

"Oh, tha whole time; she hadda room like this for me in every castle. It was tha only way I felt safe, Captain knew. See? It locks from tha inside."

Aziraphale swallowed hard, brain bubbling with curse-words in about a dozen languages as the picture finally came together for her.

Dagon – or "Niamh" – had probably started sleeping in a large cabinet as a toddler. It was convenient, on her mother's side of the bed, close. And if her husband tried to crawl over her body in the middle of the night to get the door open, she could stop him.

Why did her mother know this?

What did she catch him trying to do?

Niamh couldn't sleep on the other side of their house's great room because her brother could reach her then. Or her uncle.

_Why did her mother know this?_

_What did she **catch them** trying to do?!_

And when Niamh was old enough to understand (which was probably around the age of five if not before) Niamh's mother had also put a lock on the inside of the cabinet door.

So Niamh could feel safe. As safe as she possibly could in a house full of people that would... do something to her... if they could. If her mother wasn't there.

And in the mid 1500's... where else could a woman with a young daughter go?

Aziraphale burned with rage for a child who had been gone for over four hundred and thirty years.

How small had that cabinet gotten, as the child who would become Dagon grew?

She'd fled to the sea before her mother was even on the cooling boards - and by the grace of God had discovered one of the few ships where the captain wouldn't try to take advantage of her.

"Niamh," the angel said, her throat clogged with emotion.

"Dun call me tha--" The demon turned back with a sudden jerk, then flinched and hissed when their back hit the doorknob. Aziraphale was on her feet in the next instant.

"What is it? What hurts?"

"Nothen."

She stepped back, deliberately – one, then two steps, until she could feel the bed frame against the back of her calves.

"Lord Dagon. It's just you and me here, and you don't have to do or say anything to impress me. You've already won. So please... could you tell me what's wrong?"

They raised their chin, piercing her with ice-blue moray eyes.

"Tha Heavenly Host, they tested these lil spaces. Well at least, they tested Michael's dimension, ta make sure a demon couldna escape from it. They didna bother testen mine."

She reached for the bed-post again, to cling to it. The hits just kept on coming.

"Dagon, how did they test it?"

"Michael took me inta their pocket-dimension. I was there with them an' Gabriel. They asked me ta try ta escape it – an' I did try. As much as I could. I still wanted ta impress them, yeh see."

Dagon shut their eyes. A flash of barren mountaintop.

"But it wasna enough."

_They aren't scared enough_ – Gabriel's voice. _Do you think they're really trying?_

_I don't know,_ answered Michael. Their voice was both bored and uncomfortable, what with two guests in their exceedingly personal space. _**Make**__ them scared, if you want._

Aziraphale sank to the floor, gaze wide, cheeks florid with hectic pink blushes blooming up high – a smear of shame on each side of her face.

"What did they **do** to you?"

Dagon opened their eyes; behind them they were remote, as if their soul was trying its best to be somewhere else.

"Glowen whips in his hand," they managed.

"Oh Somebody," Aziraphale whispered. "They scourged you?"

"Chased me, down tha mountain side. Lashed at my heels as I ran. When that wasna enough, he struck me across tha back."

Over and over and over and over and Dagon had fallen, strangling on snot and braying sobs in their terror, clawing their way across the rocky dust, out of their mind desperate to flee, mentally hammering at the spiritual walls of the prison, their back a burning maze of agony –

"How long ago?"

"Weeks."

Aziraphale pressed her lips into a thin line. "Glory wielded as a scourge never heals; it will ache and burn forever."

"Do they know that?"

The angel on the stone of the floor shrugged one shoulder slowly. "I do," she answered.

The two words were an indictment. Dagon curled inward around their hopelessness.

"I could heal you."

"What?"

"I could heal your wounds, Dagon. Just let me see them."

The demon stepped back themselves, across the threshold into their little closet room.

"I promise you – I won't harm you. I won't do anything wrong to you. I swear it. I just want to... to... **undo**, somehow, what they've done."

The demon remained supremely unconvinced.

"I don't even have to actually touch you," Aziraphale pleaded. "I just have to see them and put my fingers close to them."

"I'd have ta take my shirt off."

She nodded.

The demon bared their teeth. "Nah funny business. Yeh swear it?"

"I so swear."

"By **what** do yeh swear?"

God was not to be mentioned here, the angel knew.

"By anything you wish. Upon my own name."

"Nah." Dagon bit their lip. "On that of yur lover. Swear on _**his**_ name."

Aziraphale held their gaze. "On Crowley's name I swear to you, Lord Dagon: I will simply heal your wounds. No funny business whatsoever."

The silence stretched.

"Look," she continued, pushing herself up and onto the bed to sit atop the mattress. "I'll stay right here and you decide how close you get to me. I just need to be able to stretch out an arm and get my fingertips within about a palm's length away from the scourge-marks."

"Stay put."

Dagon took one step at a time, forward until they were just within arm's reach of the angel. Then, turning three quarters away, they undid the top ties at the collar of their dark shirt, pulling it open at the throat, down to the top of their chest. Aziraphale looked away exaggeratedly, assuring them as much privacy as possible.

Lord Dagon pulled their arms back inside the sleeves, then tugged the shirt forward to lay around their neck and over the front of their torso. "Okay, yeh can look now."

The angel looked.

"No, I'm afraid that won't do... Lord Dagon, you'll have to remove your bindings."

"There wasna all this fuss in getten tha marks ta begin with!"

"I know... I know." She knotted her hands in the coverlet. "But the glory of God passes straight through cloth; there's literally no stopping it. To heal wounds of this measure I have to have nothing between them and me. I'm just a Principality, after all."

Dagon threw an aggravated glance over their shoulder. "Yeh swore."

"I did swear, on my lover's own name. I will not harm you, Dagon."

Sighing, Dagon pulled the shirt off entirely. Then they began to unwrap the long white linen bandage, immaculately clean, that had pressed their chest into a more androgynous flatness.

Once done they tossed the loose package of fabric onto their pallet bed, and crossed their arms over their torso – and the damage was bared to Aziraphale's amazed and horrified study.

Criss-crossing the shifting planes of Lord Dagon's muscled shoulders were at least a dozen whip-marks, each one glowing gold at the edges – each one a gory red down the center that revealed raw muscle that could not close, did not bleed, and would not ever heal unassisted.

"And you've endured this for weeks," Aziraphale murmured.

"Just over a month," Dagon answered, pulling the last tendrils of their long ginger hair back over their shoulder.

"Incredible."

She reached out – and, as promised, stopped just before her fingertips would have touched Dagon's ravaged flesh. It was close enough.

The first stripe healed under her focused effort and the effect was marked; the demon breathed out an "ohhhhh" that under other circumstances would have sounded like arousal.

Then again, Aziraphale knew that when something abruptly stops hurting – when the pain at last is finished – the relief can feel as a sort of release.

The wound closed all the way, leaving nothing but a shiny golden scar, and the angel moved onto the next. It took a while, as each wound fought the healing (wrought as they were in some sort of sadistic, destructive joy) but eventually each one was remedied.

Dagon's back would be scarred forever but at least they wouldn't have to look at it, and they would no longer feel the pain.

"There," Aziraphale said, withdrawing her hand. But Dagon's shoulders were quivering. "Lord Dagon?"

The demon turned and threw themselves onto the bed, sobbing as if their heart was broken.

Aziraphale's brain filled with another ten thousand effervescent obscenities; she worked a minor miracle to pull the top blanket down and wrap it around Dagon's exposed flesh before deciding that, yes. It was worth the risk, and she could argue sincerely that it didn't count as "funny business."

She stretched out and took the shuddering demon into her arms, stroking their hair.

"That's it, dearheart. Let it all out. You're safe here. Nothing can get you here."

The goose-down mattress was airy, and between the sheets were pressed here and there sprigs of lavender and mint and sage; their scent puffed into the sea-breeze that came through the open windows. Aziraphale held the weeping red-headed demon against her breast, stroking their healed shoulders – and bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted copper.

Tears soaked through her blouse, burning against her flesh. And still she held, still she caressed their temples, fingertips in their hair.

Until, without another word, Lord Dagon vanished and Aziraphale's arms were empty.

She waited... for something. For them to come back, to explain. For the moon to finally set in this timeless world, or the eternal storm to break at last.

Then she got back up and went downstairs, and retrieved the remnants of her picnic from the beach rock.

Aziraphale kept waiting until she felt a bit tired, then took a nap upstairs in the Captain's bed. It must have been about two days or so since her capture.

She woke up in the middle of it to the sound/feel of the demon re-entering their pocket-dimension.

"Good evening, Lord Dagon," she said.

There was no reply. Eventually the sensation faded, and she went back to sleep.

The next day, and the next day – Lord Dagon came and went once or twice and at each time, Aziraphale would speak up in greeting.

There would be no reply.

Aziraphale read Geoffrey Chaucer and Dante Alighieri and Aurelius Augustinus by candlelight, nibbling at the last of the cheese and bread and apples so that they would last as long as possible.

On the fifth day, Lord Dagon appeared on the beach as the angel was about halfway through "Tristan and Isolt", sitting on the nice flat rock and taking in the breeze. "Good afternoon, Lord Dagon," she said.

_Good afternoon, Aziraphale, _came the answer from fifty meters away. _I have taken tha liberty of stocken tha larders as if tha cook was expecting tha Captain. That should give yeh more variety ta dine upon, if yeh wish._

"Oh! Thank you so much!" While she didn't necessarily have to eat, it was pleasant and calming to do so, and it helped to pass the time. Come to think of it, she'd had the worst craving for mussels for at least a day now – surely a little sea-side castle like this topped up with a fresh catch whenever the mistress was arriving.

When was the last time...? Ahh, two hundred and sixty years ago, that little place in Belgium with Crowley. Perhaps she could go see whatever the castle galley had in the way of this century's version of an Amarone...

Aziraphale left the beach without looking back, knowing that Dagon stared out on their ever-tumultuous ocean.

So she didn't see the demon turn to watch her leave.

Lord Dagon stayed to watch the waves play for perhaps another half-hour, then their Appearance notified them that the phone was ringing at their desk in the Stacks.

They seamlessly dropped back into the seat beneath it, wearing the Appearance like a diving suit and beginning to reincorporate it into themselves as they picked up the line.

"YOU HAVE REACHED DAGON, MASTER OF TORMENTS AND LORD OF THE FILES. HOW MAY I HINDER YOU TODAY?" they asked in a dreadfully deep and creepy voice.

"Don't bother, it's just me," came the posh tones from the handset.

"Ah. Michael."

"I just... I just needed someone to talk to." The angel's words now carried a plaintive note. "Because no one else seems to understand."

"What?"

"I mean – just how dreadful it all is! Having these awful creatures in our souls. The horrendous burden that we are made to carry for the rest of the Host."

Dagon remembered fingertips stroking their hair, the gentle arms around them. The consideration that the angel had taken to shield Dagon's nakedness in the blanket, so that they would not feel assaulted by the comfort she was trying to render.

The demon couldn’t call to memory the last time they’d felt such absence of pain and discomfort, and such presence of care.

That was why they’d been so reluctant to return, since.

"I can barely **think**, knowing that this filth is inside me somewhere. And they say the most awful things."  
  
_It's okay, let it all out,_ the angel had said. _I'm here and you're safe, no one will hurt you,_ she had said.

She had called them "dearheart".

No one had done that since the Captain, in their most private moments.

"Uh huh," answered Dagon.

And glory wielded as a scourge never heals; even a Principality had known that.

"I'm so glad you understand," gushed Michael. "Do you think perhaps... that we could meet up somewhere? Have a walk and commiserate a bit, I guess? Saint James's Park is just down the--"

"Yeh're na tha only one who is busy," interrupted Dagon, and hung up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * The title of this chapter is from Emily Jane Brontë, Wuthering Heights: “If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.” 
> 
> * I've probably played fast and loose with what an Irish castle on the shore cliffs might have in it -- and I don't much care. I'm here for angst and eventual reunion and a few other minor items; background color is splashed about most carelessly.
> 
> * However, one of the few stories of Grace O'Malley to survive to present day is that when she met Queen Elizabeth someone gave her a handkerchief and she blew her nose into it, then promptly threw it into a fireplace to the courtiers' dismay -- stating that once it was used, it was unclean and must be destroyed. So I can really see her investing in being able to take a good hot freshwater bath once on shore for a minute.
> 
> * It's interesting to see the difference between God's glory wielded as a brand (with consent between loving partners) and the same glory used as a whip to beat someone else into terror or submission (or until they manage to flee whatever prison they're in). I might have some issues with my Protestant upbringing.
> 
> * It's also important to me that Aziraphale comforts Dagon not by telling them to hush, and everything will be okay -- but that they can feel whatever they're feeling and let it all out, and they'll be safe and accepted. As Saint Lizzo has told us: "Oh, I get a little lost sometimes; sometimes you need to cry..."
> 
> * In the previous chapter, Crowley mentions eating mussels 260 years ago. In this chapter Aziraphale thinks of the same experience, and wants to go looking for an Amarone. In the original "Silence of the Lambs", Lecter eats the census taker's liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone. Hmm.
> 
> * I like to think that Dagon has their regular voice for in-person conversations but when they're doing an official call (or a broadcast to Crowley's radio/tv) THEY HAVE THE SUPER SCARY DEEP VOICE. (Hey, this also explains how they did it in the show.)


	7. Where Your Lust Ends And Where Your Love Begins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael folded their hands and, remarkably, smiled.
> 
> "What if," they said, "it wasn't done for you?"
> 
> Crowley barked a laugh. "Who on Earth could it have been for, then?"
> 
> "Aziraphale."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has been so kind, so I return bearing a gift: MORE ANGST. Welcome back. :)
> 
> This chapter title comes from VAST's song "Pretty When You Cry"; the video is [absolutely worth a watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOZ6ptqcbUc). 
> 
> Content Consideration: some weird shit that I can only think to label as potentially "body horror", on a level that I've not yet done *coughs* in my fandom works *cough*. It's _meant_ to be disturbing, and it's relevant to the character -- but if you think you might need the ability to fast forward past the real squick, please go ahead and copy the words **Yes-More was Not-Enough** and hit CTRL-F when you're ready to tap out, and that will get you past the explicit stuff.

"How do you _**know**_... that God still loves you?"

Crowley was perhaps not at his best. It had been, by his admittedly unprovable reckoning, about seven days since his capture.

He was at the moment sprawled on the granite, star-fished. Although his opera suit was clean and repaired it was now also hopelessly rumpled and wrinkled.

He had been trying – and failing, for days – to sleep.

It was the noise: the constant wailing of the wind. It was the sun with its never-ending watery light. It was the cold of the stone that sucked away all body heat, making him feel torpid but unrelentingly aware.

It was the lack of food, the lack of water. It was the lack of the warm curvy body of his Aziraphale, and of his angel's sweet little rump pressed against Crowley's belly.

Crowley opened gritty eyelids, not bothering to move his head.

Michael posed primly on their rococo stool; the gold leaf on its knurled legs matched the gold of glory blooming across their cheeks and nose.

I'll bet they don't realize they're within reach of my foot, the demon thought. I could kick them and that stool straight off the summit before they could even blink – and wouldn't that make for a nice change of pace?

But Crowley sat up slowly instead, tucking that belligerent leg under its partner to keep it civil.

"If you want me to talk, you'll have to give me a glass of water."

Michael stared down into his face. Crowley stared back.

Keep it up, you twee little shit. I went without eyelids for several hundred thousands of years – it's **impossible** to beat me in a staring contest.

And at this distance there was no missing the fact that his lips were cracked, his voice rough, and his tongue a stiff dry stick in his mouth.

Four minutes later Michael sighed and waved a hand, A clear water glass manifested beside Crowley's knee. It had two perfect ice-cubes floating in it: a testament to Their Nibs' generosity.

He drank deeply; even in the first few sips he felt his throat and sinuses rehydrate. Michael made an impatient noise – Crowley held one finger up in the direction of their face and made them wait while he finished off the entire pint, even rolling the last mouthful around his fangs and back and forth over his tongue before swallowing it.

Then he coughed to clear his lungs, and spat an impressive loogie over the side of the sheer cliff.

"Alrighty. Where were we, then?"

Michael's eyes were bright, and Crowley could gleefully appreciate – even over the constant keening of the mountain zephyrs – the sound of the seraph grinding their back teeth together.

"How do you _**know**_... that God still loves you?" they repeated dutifully.

"Oh! It was the flowers."

Michael's gaze shone like operating room lights reflected from scalpel blades. "What flowers."

Crowley set the glass aside and folded his lanky limbs beneath him again. Sure. Why not.

"You've got to understand that I've known Aziraphale for a bit over six thousand years now... and that I've loved him for only about ninety seconds less. Love was just as foreign to me as a demon than it had ever been to me as an angel."

Michael opened their mouth and Crowley interrupted "-- yes, yes, I get it. 'We're angels, we love everything.' I knew the party line too, Michael. But I never **felt** it. I never knew what it actually meant.

"So imagine standing on a parapet on the eastern wall of the Garden of Eden, feeling a strange new emotion... and seeing off in the distance a young man challenge a terrifying beast twice his size. Even to fight it to the death, because it threatened the young woman beside him.

"And she, staying – unarmed, completely vulnerable. Trusting to his will and his strength to save her. Believing in him. Carrying his child in her womb, a gift that only she could give both him and the world.

"Somehow I knew that the same feeling that was in me was what motivated those two young mortals, each in their own way. And when that angel spread his wing over me to protect me from the new invention known as 'rain' – I felt hope for the first time since my Fall. I came to hope that that angel would someday feel this strange new feeling too, for me."

"What does this have to do with God?"

Crowley made a calming gesture, all hint of humor gone. The water had soothed his body some but that comfort now highlighted the rest of his pains and exhaustions. "If you really want to know, Michael, you'll have to let me tell the story how I want to tell it."

He licked his lips; they felt flaky like desert parchment, like mummy wrappings.

"God is Love, and humans have studied both Love and God for six thousand years now because they're in pursuit of both. They are always on some level seeking that return to the Perfect Love – the only one that truly satisfies the ache inside them.

"So when the moment arrived at last that Aziraphale and I were united in love, the night after the Near-Apocalypse... I finally felt that sense of completion, of connection. The last remaining worry in my mind was that my love was not the same as God's Love – that it was somehow possible to truly and deeply love someone in a way that was also completely cast out from God."  
  
Michael's lips tightened.

"I went to sleep with that fear in my heart; I went to sleep in my own pocket-dimension, which from its first day had been nothing but desert for as far as you could travel in any direction. Nothing but one small tent in the center of a million sand dunes.

"I woke up the next day and... the desert had bloomed. Only God could reach us there; only God could call up mist from the ground in my soul and not wake either me or Aziraphale. Only God could have raised up little green plants with gold and white flowers.

"She did that. For me. And that's when I knew that even though I was cast out from **Heaven**, I had not been separated from God. I am Hers; I am Her creature. I am Her creation. I believe that there's no way to – to **remove** me from Her, just as there's no way to remove me from Aziraphale. Not truly."

Michael folded their hands and, remarkably, smiled.

"What if," they said, "it wasn't done for you?"

Crowley barked a laugh. "Who on Earth could it have been for, then?"

"Aziraphale."

He gaped at them for several seconds.

"He's always been one of Her particular favorites, you know. And Her favorites get away with all sorts of things the rest of us can't. Why do you think you Fell simply for asking questions – and Aziraphale has done oodles of questionable acts and remains an angel? He even gave away his flaming sword, then lied to God _**directly**_ about it – and it was business as usual!"

"Bu--"

"Don't you realize Aziraphale must have been having some sort of crisis of conscience? He had just gone against the Host, flown directly against God's chosen – and was now sporting with an actual demon? I mean, we all know it's awful to be going around mating with **mortals. **But in the larger scheme of things it's a breech of manners on the same level as picking your nose in public, or yawning without covering your mouth.

"However, the things he did with **you** were..." And they made the tsk-ing noise with their tongue and teeth, shaking their head sadly.

Crowley sighed, weary to his very bones.

"It's gonna be like this every single time, Mikey? You show up in here and start some sort of kindergarten bullshit to try to get me to lose my faith in my angel or be jealous of him, something? So what if She did it for him? Whoever does kindness to the one I love has done a kindness for me too!"

"How can you know anything of love whatsoever?"

"Because God snuck it into that book of yours! Read 1st Corinthians 13, for once – I marvel that She got it past your censors!"

Michael's brows shot nearly to their hairline; they leaned back and looked at him down the entire length of their nose.

"Get the picture already: your love is an **abomination**."

"Pondus meum amor meus," Crowley answered, dropping each word precisely into the air.

The angel's lips moved soundlessly, trying to process Latin they hadn't used in at least fifteen hundred years.

"Your love... is fat?"

"'My love is gravity.' It's from the confessions of Saint Augustine. Have you really read absolutely **nothing** about these subjects that so intrigue you – not even from the saints? My love is an inexplicable force, a fact of the universe. It will always draw me to the place that I should be."

"And look!" Michael spread their hands wide. "First you Fell, and now **you're** _**here**_."

The demon lay back on the rock again, stretched out as before. "Thank you ever so much for stopping by; I'm sure you know your way out."

The shuddering bell-tone of Michael's exit scintillated across the mountain range. The minor sense of triumph Crowley felt as a result began to fade within minutes.

"God," he whispered, staring up at the sky. "Just like I told them: some part of me has always hoped that you had not abandoned me, whatever happened with the Host. No matter where I wound up.

"I wait on you now, my Lord. Please. Tell me what I must do."

And Crowley waited, in the last piece of silence inside his mind untouched by the thin whistling screams of the arctic winds.

Into that silence came the smallest voice.

_(you already know what you must do.)_

Crowley's jaw dropped agape. He did not speak.

He waited.

_(what Michael said was true.)_

Tears rose in his eyes. He did not speak.

He waited.

_(you must truly surrender – to both Michael and to the innermost truth you have denied for so long.)_

Then the silence faded and his ears reopened, penetrated by the constant cacophony.

A single hard sob shook his slim chest, then another. He raised his hands to cover his face. The hated silver chains clanked and chimed.

Oh God, he whispered back in his thoughts. I know you're right. You're right. But what you require of me is so hard to do.

The tears rolled down his cheeks and dropped to the sterile stone to either side of his head; seems like all the good that one glass of water had done was to be poured out and wasted.

But Aziraphale's lover bore down and focused, as if his very existence depended on it. Once his mind was clear he began again, despite his weeping:

You are nothing. You are worthless. You are a little speck. You are lower than the dogs, even lower than the rats. Every single hand in the world is raised to destroy you. You dwell among the dust. Everywhere you appear you bring only disease and destruction...

Crowley's breathing eased and his tears eventually dried as he spiraled inward to a place darker than his serpent scales, not shiny as they were but dull and matte, devouring all light. Hours or days later, he could not have said if asked – but two things happened simultaneously:

The demon at last surrendered to the tiny primal singularity of utter darkness he had unearthed deep within himself.

And the constant wailing tempest in Michael's pocket-dimension faded away completely – leaving a breathless acoustic emptiness, like a bowl waiting to be filled.

Meanwhile, Michael had remembered their promise. No need to check the World map – they were on their way with only a thought. Here, back to the demon's flat.

They watered the confused but cautiously grateful plants with another miraculous misting, and considered Doing It on the floor in here. In the atrium that held this lush green garden that Crowley so prized.

After all, Aziraphale and Crowley never had.

("They're only **plants**, darling – what's the trouble?"

"I'm just not quite interested in... having an audience."

"Well it's not like they have eyes to watch us. And if they're able to hear or smell or some other sense, then they're certainly already getting a good dose of it whenever we make love elsewhere in the flat."

"You – you know what? I'll do my best to pretend I never heard you say that. I... I.... ngk..." and the demon had twitched irritably for hours.)

Michael meandered through the flat to the kitchen. Having been careful so far not to touch anything, they reached out and lay their palm square on the top of the butcher's block island – and let themselves remember more.

("You were so clever, dear boy, when you bought a piece of furniture of the most perfect height," he panted. From behind, one hand held Crowley's throat, the other fisted the demon's dripping cock. His body was draped over the wooden surface, impaled on Aziraphale's erection. "I've wanted to do this for ages."

"I actually would like to get to cook in here sometimes..." The spurious protest was barely audible, faint with satisfaction.

"Come now, dearest: this room would be clean enough to **do **_**surgery**_ in, whenever I will it to be so."

A smile from the slender man now, his cheek still pressed to the block. "I knew I never should have showed you that _Hannibal_ series.")

So many surfaces, in this flat. So many memories.

The big golden desk, where Aziraphale in her female form sat on its surface with her little feet on Crowley's shoulders and he ate her out with a tongue half as long as his arm, until she screamed in ecstasy and tore at his hair and raked her nails up his shoulders.

Michael could lay their hand right where her ass had printed itself in saliva and come, if they wanted to. The top of the desk was immaculately clean but the memory remained.

More. On the couch in the entertainment room.

On the floor and walls in the shower; on the sink in the bathroom.

Everywhere, in here. Michael had watched.

But no.

The bed, in the bedroom.

Michael stood in the doorway again for nineteen minutes, just staring at it. The covers were made up neatly.

Michael wanted to unmake it. To Do It right here on the black satin sheets, while no one was watching.

The seraph had experimented with Doing It.

There had been a space of around three months in between discovering the method of creating their own private miniature universes and the time that they had been required to bring Gabriel and Dagon into theirs for testing.

In that time, Michael's world was very different. Smaller, for one thing.

And no one else was invited in to play; the very idea would have been inconceivable.

Michael's pocket-dimension then was hot, and red, and slick, and tight, and it pulsed like the inside of a heart or a uterus. It was walls and bed and ceiling all at once. It pressed on Michael's body on all sides, on skin that was alive with sizzling nerve response.

The seraph had grown a petite little vagina between their legs, and immediately the universal womb enclosing them had manifested a cock to penetrate it, growing directly out of the wall that pushed and bumped against Michael's front.

Michael fit the appendage into their new orifice, filled it until it stretched, and it felt good.

Yes. More.

The red room wall sprouted little buzzers that mated up to Michael's clitoris and the nipples the angel decided to create, and that felt good also.

Yes. More.

Michael reasoned that they had two hands, and so they concentrated until there spawned two erect cocks growing from the join of their thighs on either side of their Venus mound. They stroked them with lubricated fists as they felt the wall behind them sandwich them in firmly, with a long and thin tendril infiltrating their anus.

And the whole tight little room rippled, clenched in orgasm, flowing with sweet-salted juices and Michael thought deliriously that maybe they were actually inside their own cunt, penetrating the penetrated, jacking and vibrating and thrusting.

Yes. More.

They couldn't stop themselves for days, driven by this new private drug, but it didn't matter. Michael had vacation due anyway; decades of it if they'd wanted.

They were naked and mindless, incapable of shame. They ravaged like an animal inside their own soul, inside this hot wet pulsating room.

Yes-More was sought after in ways that were not physically possible, ways that would warp any shared reality. Miles of skin, with nerve endings rewired to be as sensitive as nipples. Digestive tract shortened to a straight line, so that when the Michael-thing was impaled from both sides on two long phalluses they could touch in the middle. Every toe became a clitoris, engorged from its hood, aroused and tingling, stroking against walls that quivered like a g-spot in response. Every finger was a turgid cock and they sucked on one hand and ground the other into a crotch that was...

… increasingly...

… bored.

Yes-More was Not-Enough. Not **ever **enough.

With a thought Michael changed their pocket-dimension into an endless primordial ocean and their body back into its regular genderless shape, and they swam for hundreds of miles until every last particle of sweat and semen and vaginal ejaculate was washed from their flesh and hair.

Until they were finally clean once more.

Then Michael built their high-place prison, to show to the others and to jail the demon. Sterile, open, empty, clean, perfect. Just as everyone would have expected.

Why? Why was it that these impossible heights of pleasure had been so unsatisfying – when that treasonous angel and infidel demon seemed so delighted with interactions that were practically banal in comparison?

It had to do with the bed. The bed was where it happened. Not just the inserting parts of themselves into parts of each other (although that had happened too, and often).

It was where they had slept, that one time. It was where they had Loved.

Michael wanted to Do It in their bed.

No one else to see. Writhing with a thousand horrible body parts, oozing--

No. That path didn't go anywhere useful.

But within their soul built a treacherous picture: of them on their back, naked in the sheets. In this imagining, they only had the one cock and it was in the proper spot that mortals would expect.

Impaled on it, straddling their hips... strong thighs beneath Michael's hands, and a quim with a neatly-trimmed ginger pelt that clenched on their erection.

And up further, where a taut torso arched and bucked, where two heavy breasts with hard pink nipples bounced on each thrust.

Red hair fell like a waterfall of blood but the iridescent scales shone beneath it, mother of pearl, reflected moonlight on wavelets.

Reach up and there are tears on the demon's cheek, below eyelids that veiled blue moray eyes.

Reach up and brush them away with both thumbs. One thumb in Michael's mouth, to taste – and it is salty as the sea. One thumb wanders to the demon's mouth and there it is sucked between fangs that are impotent in surrender to oncoming orgasm and Michael grips their hip in one cruel hand and –

The seraph standing in the doorway closed their eyes.

Shining scales over forehead and cheeks, shimmering pearl instead of holy gold. So like and unlike the mark of God's glory on an angel's face. What did it mean?

Was this – would it be – Love?

One way to find out.

Meanwhile, Somewhere Else Completely:

_Aziraphale, would yeh be willen ta take dinner with me this evening?_ said the voice from the shoreline.

Here, little fishie fishie, thought the angel. Aloud she answered "Of course, Lord Dagon. Shall I cook for us? My repertoire is limited but what I know, I have mastered."

She bit her lip and hoped they liked crepes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * This chapter is slightly short but it leaves me more words in the next chapter for MORE ANGST and also more VAST lyrics. 
> 
> * I've got to say it: I really love Michael's little bench. It's so **them**.
> 
> * I'm with Les Mis on this, and so is Crowley: to Love another person is to see the face of God.
> 
> * When we last left Aziraphale, she was reading a number of authors as she waited for Lord Dagon to return -- among them, Aurelius Augustinus. Crowley quotes him here under his better known name of Saint Augustine. 
> 
> * Know what I love? I love it when two characters are dialoguing both with the best of all possible intentions... but since they're coming from two different places aligned with their own experiences/damage, they completely miscommunicate. (See ["Meet Me Inside"](https://genius.com/Original-broadway-cast-of-hamilton-meet-me-inside-lyrics) from _Hamilton_ for an absolutely heart-wrenching example of this.)
> 
> There's something about this three way conversation between Michael, Crowley, and God that I love even more... but it's probably going to have to wait two chapters for me to admit exactly what it is. :X
> 
> * I do love that Crowley gets all prissy at the thought that his plants have been aware of him getting good and fucked. :)
> 
> * Michael is what you get when you have a passionate personality laced up in a social strait-jacket for a few million years, then show them some good sex and finally provide them with some privacy. I may have some issues with my Protestant upbringing.
> 
> * "We covet what we see every day" versus "I didn't want to hurt you... But you're pretty when you cry."
> 
> * So we've seen God's glory used to create a scar on a consenting partner, and God's glory used to scourge someone in a way that would never heal unaided -- and now we see where God's glory occasionally emerges randomly on the flesh of angels, to mark them as belonging to Her. Hmmm.
> 
> * Crepes. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. :)


	8. How Many Men Lay Dead From This Killing Hole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You can simply say it. There's just us here, of course.”
> 
> Dagon swirled their own glass and stared down into it like a crystal ball.
> 
> “Some things are never simply said,” they answered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's title is a lyric from VAST's "Dirty Hole", which dove-tailed nicely with the previous chapter's vibe.
> 
> Content Consideration: somewhat dubious consent occurs. Everyone's got the best of intentions (mostly?) and communicates the best they can (well... okay, I'll let that slide for now) but sometimes shit still happens. Not what I **personally** would call rape/non-con and certainly no violence involved, but DRAMA. So please curate your own reading experience.

Fortunately Lord Dagon intended to provide the meal, and could do so at a whim.

Fortunately – because Aziraphale had a sneaking suspicion that only a medium-sized miracle had made her attempt at the mussels two days ago wind up as anything edible, and that such a miracle had only been permitted courtesy of Dagon's pity.

The angel thought that they might dine on the long trestle table in the Great Hall (which was, as Great Halls go, more of a Moderate Hall). But no, another quiet prompting from the phantom voice directed her to the back of the kitchen and the little round table where she took her own solitary meals.

It was set for two places and lit with two beeswax candles; neither seat could be qualified as the "head" of the table. It was cozy. Dagon looked up from where they stood behind their own chair, gripping the back of it nervously.

Aziraphale realized she hadn't seen the demon face to face since the first day of her incarceration, seven days ago now by her reckoning. Dagon had simply been a lean silhouette farther down the tempest-blown shore, a ringing bell-tone of entries and exits, and an occasional diffident voice inside her mind.

She felt certain that Dagon didn't mean to be cruel... but the circumstances were still torturous.

Never mind missing her own dearest demon (never mind it **never mind **_**I**__**SAID**_), Aziraphale was well-accustomed to opening the shop every time he wanted to watch the ebb and flow of humanity and carry out some level of non-personal interaction. And of course there were the shops, and the restaurants, and the operas, and the parks...

It was just... people. They made the neat things like books and silver snuff boxes and crème brulee donuts and musicals and... you just got used to them. Being there. Like they did.

The solitude here ached like a bruise too deep to show up on your flesh.

So the smile Aziraphale gave Dagon was lit with true pleasure – at last, another face. Another voice to hear.

And, remarkably, Dagon smiled in return.

They pulled out their chairs and sat down; Lord Dagon served each course with manners that were charming in their solemnity. First was a bowl for each, with a light salad of vinaigrette-tossed crispy greens that the angel didn't immediately recognize, with thinly sliced carrots and radishes.

"This is very good, but I don't know what it is," the angel offered when her fork hit the wooden bottom of the bowl.

"Dandelion greens," Dagon answered, and chuckled at Aziraphale's look of surprise. "They grow wild on tha nearby hills in nearly all seasons."

"They're considered a weed in London."

"Yah, well – I wouldna want ta eat anything that's grown outta a London sidewalk, myself..."

Next was a course of grilled oysters garnished with watercress and a tart parsley sauce, and a flute of champagne joined the other tall glass already by Aziraphale's plate. Two perfect ice-cubes floated in the water that the celestial being was careful to alternate drinking with the wine; she didn't want to lose any of her faculties tonight.

"Thank you, Lord Dagon. This is wonderful."  
  
"Please," said the demon, shifting in their chair. "It's just Dagon, here."

"However you like it... Dagon."

The plates vanished themselves as soon as their contents were devoured, and with a little bit of a flourish the Lord of the Files delivered a new dish: the main course, for each of them a lobster with some sort of sauce that seemed to be chardonnay-based and a side of scallops with drawn butter.

Aziraphale ate slowly and tried to do it neatly – but really, with lobster there was only so much delicacy that could be applied while still accessing any of the edible bits. Dagon ate their seafood as if born to it – and perhaps in a sense, they were – making a neat pile to one side of their plate of red lobster shell parts utterly and effortlessly cleaned of any meat.

Not to mention that there was little or no dinner conversation, no dialogue to distract from the spectacle of the mortal food process. Not even the intrusion of a waiter. Where was the happy medium between staring and not staring? Are **they **staring? Did I spill some sauce? Did I happen to drop anything in my cleavage and they're simply too polite to say?

Nonetheless, the angel held her own and was wiping her hands and mouth on a linen napkin when Lord Dagon removed the plates and replaced them with two little dishes of salted caramel truffles – and two cordial glasses of a clear liquid that, on discreet testing, revealed itself to be a sweet ice wine strong enough to make Aziraphale gasp.

"Truffles?" she asked, before taking a deep drink of water.

"I have managed, in time, ta acquire **some **modern tastes..."

The moray-eyed demon ate their own chocolates slowly, almost meditatively – and drank their wines like a...

Well. They drank **a **_**lot**_. Aziraphale noticed the ice wine in Dagon's glass refilling itself not once but twice, and made no comment.

Until she'd run out of truffles, at least.

Then in the candlelight, comfortably full and just slightly tipsy, she realized this meal and its setting was not simply cozy but **sensual**. This was the sort of meal you work up to impress a new date, or celebrate with a lover.

Huh.

"Dagon... I hadn't really seen you in six days or so, now."

"Yah."  
  
"This wonderful meal you've produced for me. What _**is**_ it, really?"

Dagon quirked a brow. "'m fairly sure it was lobster."

Alrighty. Aziraphale picked up her ice wine glass (full again, she noticed on the way aloft) and took an entire mouthful, exhaling the fumes that built the heat behind her breastbone.

"You can simply say it. There's just us here, of course."  
  
Dagon swirled their own glass and stared down into it like a crystal ball.

"Some things are never simply said," they answered.

Aziraphale emptied her glass and pushed it away from her; it stayed obediently empty.

"Do yeh know what it's like, when yeh first arrive in Hell after dyen?" Dagon mused softly, as if to themselves. "Yeh wake up alone in a filthy alcove, under flickering lights. Yeh're groggy an' exhausted. Yeh wake an' sleep several times before yeh're strong enough ta get up, follow tha maze of hallways inta tha populated cubes. Yeh find one that appears unoccupied an' yeh sit down in it."  
  
Aziraphale reached for her water, only to hold it in her hands. Dagon's gaze tracked the gesture.

"Nah food, nah water. Yeh follow tha movements of tha group. Yeh learn when it's time ta sit in tha cube an' when ta walk tha halls with tha others. Yeh learn that if yeh dun do as everyone else does, punishment follows. Pain. Sometimes other... things."

Enforced conformity – and the threat of unspecified, nebulous torments. Yes, Heaven and Hell did have a fair amount in common.

"Even there, there are friendships. Or at least, people that yeh dun mind sitten near. There's na a mort of reflective surfaces."  
  
Dagon's gaze flicked up to hers.

"So it's a long time before yeh see what yeh've become. Then yeh wonder: was this what yeh were made inta? Or was this inside yeh all tha time... an' Hell just lets it out?"

Did you scream, the first time you saw? Aziraphale thought and did not ask.

"Yeh find out that this is all a pit, tha darkest pit – yet there are levels ta this pit. There are levels ta tha misery yeh're made ta feel in this place. Yeh starta figure out that there are ways ta stand out without being punished. Yeh find yeh can climb up through tha ranks like a sailor on tha main-mast."

And all of a sudden, Aziraphale knew the name of the game... because she had also been guilty of playing it with Crowley. It was called "Something Hurts Too Much To Say But I Still Need To Talk About It So I'm Gonna Talk **Around** It Until You Ask The Right Questions For Me To Simply Answer."

It was very nearly as awkward as its name suggested.

"How did you die, Dagon?"

The demon blanched as pale as snow. Then, as their glass refilled itself yet again, they answered "I fell from tha main-mast--" and winked one eye in an incredible display of bleak humor.

"A sailor of nineteen years, and first mate to The Dark Lady of Doona – simply falling off the mast? It's not that straightforward."

"Of course na. Rumor had reached us of a plot, that tha Joyces sought ta attack Clare Island in force – Captain's own home – an' although every weather-eye predicted a storm we had nah choice. Tha rest of her fleet was in tha north an' would make land-fall at Clare just fine but her lieutenants were reluctant ta attack without her, lest tha local militia confuse them with tha true invaders. It was only us on her flagship that had ta try ta run in tha face of that torrent. We had ta try ta beat tha weather ta Clare or count it as lost."

"When tha storm hit, it was like an enemy army of its own. It surrounded us. In nineteen years I'd na seen anything like it. Dunno if Captain had either. She was tryen ta heave us ta --" and here Dagon's sardonic gaze took a glint of pity on the landlubber angel. "That means ta cripple tha ship with tha sails an' rudder in such a way that yeh're na really sailen, but yeh can still move some with tha storm an' tha ocean. Yeh're na weighed at anchor with tha waves crashen down on yeh."

"But it didn't work."

"Riggen on tha main-sail was fouled – all others trimmed right but with nearly full sheet on tha main-mast we were still runnen hard in tha worst blow we'd seen. Captain tried ta send us all below deck, ta wait it out."

"But you didn't go."

Aziraphale wasn't sure that Dagon heard her. "With that sheet full nahwhere was safe; we couldna land on any port or shore without our keel bursten wide open, an' there was every chance tha waves would tear tha boat apart. But one sailor with a knife could climb tha mast, cut tha halyard right below tha block an' bring tha main-sail down. We'd limp ta shore on tha rest of tha sails but we'd live."  
  
"And you were that sailor."  
  
Dagon shrugged one shoulder. "Captain wouldna let anyone else go." The demon grinned again, but their faraway look was softened by affectionate memory. "An' I waited until she'd lashed herself ta the wheel so she couldna stop me."

And Niamh was the only one who'd dare disobey even a tied-down Ní Mháille. Aziraphale could see it reflected in Dagon's eyes...

The lone dark figure running across a slippery wooden deck that pitched and bucked in the lightning-flashes of storm. The diminutive but strong woman wrestling with the wheel, hair as red as a fire brand, who first screamed their name in confusion – then in rage – then in terror.

But the figure reached the mast and, one hand touching the knife in its scabbard at their hip to make sure it was still there, began to climb aloft. They made it all the way to the top. A moment's work sawing at the sodden ropes and the main-sail billowed down toward the deck.

The ship would survive; its crew would be saved.

Then lightning split the sky right overhead, with a crack of thunder on its heels – a sonic burst that shook Niamh's hands loose from the drenched rigging just as the ship plunged into a trough between the massive waves.

_This must be what it's like ta fly_, thought the sailor as they soared up and away from the sinking mast. It was too sudden, too incredible, to even feel fear. There was only a sense of loss as they watched their beloved Captain's pale face frame the long "eee" sound of their name with her lips – a keening wail of grief.

The watery deep caught them in a cradling embrace as silent as the grave. They tried to swim to the surface but there was none. The world had become nothing but salt-water and darkness.

Niamh felt their lungs fill up. They bucked and screamed the last of their breath.

And as they surrendered to the reaching, burbling tentacles of madness rising up from the ocean floor the last thought remained: The ship would survive. Its crew would be saved.

Captain would live.

That was all that mattered.

"She lost you at sea," Aziraphale's eyes filled with tears. "That's horrible. She couldn't even bring you home to bury you."

Dagon's face was a mask of sudden shock. "That's na... quite... true..."

They vanished from the table. The sense of their presence did not leave but rather relocated – to the top of the highest tower.

"Somebody give me strength," muttered the angel, dashing the water from her cheeks and stumbling out into the courtyard. To think, having to climb all those stairs on such a rich dinner...

But she managed. She paused for a second one floor below to make sure she wasn't panting as she entered the Captain's quarters. Dagon was sitting on the bed when she came in with her breathing carefully even.

In Dagon's hands was a wooden box, lovingly carved on all sides with intricate Celtic knots. The angel approached slowly, so as not to startle them as they opened the lid. Aziraphale could see the inside of the box was lined with a rich blue velvet – the price of it must have been dear indeed – and on the cushioned bottom lay a thick lock of ginger hair that was bound with a hammered gold clasp.

"Oh," she breathed.

"She had these made, for each of her long-time crew," the demon said softly, not looking up. "For those that had families, she would send their box home ta them – if tha time came. When tha time came. Those that didna... she buried in her family's graveyard."

Aziraphale edged around to where she could sit on the bed, beside Dagon who still stared into the box.

"What does it mean, that this is still here?" they asked after a moment. "Right under her side of her bed, where Captain always left mine? Does that mean that she..."

Aziraphale shook her head fiercely. "No, not that at all. It's just that this beach and this castle are based on your memories, and before your death you would remember the box being here. You were her family – of course she buried your box on her land. She must have loved you so."

Dagon closed the box with gentle fingertips and set it on the nightstand, their expression brooding. "I'm na so sure of that... yeh know, she didna always have a lover or a husband with her or here ta meet her when she made harbor. Sometimes she slept alone. There was one night, an' another storm around this tower – both of us were a mort petrified of tryen ta sleep up here in tha thick of it. We dragged pillows an' blankets an' my mattress down ta tha library an' made a bed there."

Didn't put Cook out of their room, Aziraphale thought – nor did they displace anyone in the barracks.

_**One**_ bed, specified the next thought, swift on the heels of the first.

Her skin began to tingle, up from the base of her spine out across her shoulders, raising the hair on the back of her neck and the base of her scalp.

_ **I know this game.** _

"I crawled inta tha bed, under tha sheets with her, and --"

"And you took her face in your hands, and you kissed her... like _**this**_."

That's always how the game ends, after all – you find a way to have the other person ask the questions and say the things you need to hear. You find yourself drawn to the place that you should be... and once you're there, you're ready for whatever happens next.

Dagon's lips were warm, tasting of ice wine and salted caramel, and they were pliant with surrender. They did not pull away, so it was several intense moments later when Aziraphale drew back even the slightest bit to look at them.

Between the heels of Aziraphale's palms they were panting softly – and their eyes were wide with anxiety and longing.

The winds along the waves picked up and lashed the beach far below with renewed frenzy.

The angel let go of the demon and lay back on the bed, and unlaced her bodice with a minor miracle. The two halves of it came undone and fell to either side of her ribcage; she watched how Dagon's gaze drifted down to follow the shift of her heavy breasts under the linen blouse.

"What'd she do then?" the angel asked softly.

"Laughed – but sweetly. Na mean; she was never cruel. Called me her silly cabin joy. Bussed my forehead an' told me ta go ta sleep, then rolled over an' dozed off herself."

"Hmmmm..." Aziraphale stretched and Dagon continued to be mesmerized.

Then she shimmied out of her shirt, shoving it to the side. Dagon's lips parted in shock.

Aziraphale in female form was a few dozen lovely curves – all plush and exciting as the staff of the Ritz could well attest. She tucked her thumbs into the waistband of her doeskin trousers and smiled up at the blue-eyed demon.

"_**I'm**_ not laughing, dearheart. Whatever it is that **you** want, do it tonight."

Dagon shifted uneasily, although their focus never left her body. "Show me."

"Ahhhh... for **that**, there'd have to be at least a **little** bit of funny business."

Their gaze narrowed, and the little quirk of a smile appeared at the corner of their lips again; Aziraphale realized she was seeing someone closer to Ní Mháille's Niamh, the person that Dagon used to be.

Perhaps still was, in some ways. The runaway. The accountant. The pirate brave enough to climb a mast in the worst storm they'd seen, in order to save the people they loved.

"'m game if yeh are."

Aziraphale kicked off her boots and wriggled all the way onto the bed. "Come touch what you're looking at, then. For starters."

Dagon bent thoughtfully, caressing Aziraphale's cheek, to kiss her again. The hand on her cheek moved, unhurried, as the kiss deepened. It stroked the line of her jaw, up to the point of her chin and down the column of her throat, across her collarbone, following the coastline of her body until it came to the rounded dune of one full breast. There it circled the pillowy flesh in an ever-decreasing spiral, until the fingertips found and teased her nipple.

Dagon swallowed the angel's quiet moan. Their boots joined the other footwear in a convivial gathering on the stone floor.

"You're a-- you're pretty good at that. That feels really... ahhhh!"

With wicked eel-fangs carefully stowed behind clever lips, the demon's mouth had found her other nipple. Dagon's tongue laved it into a tight point, sucking it to a deeper shade of coral pink. Aziraphale's hips shimmied on the coverlet.

"This is na my first time playing with a set of these," the demon growled after a moment.

Oh thank Somebody, she thought in the privacy of her own head – because for the most part virgins are fidgety, terrified, boring, and needy. And all I'd **really** like to do right now is get laid.

She unbuttoned the front of her trousers to shove them down her thighs to where she could swim her knees out of them, feeling every inch of her skin scintillating with arousal.

Dagon moved to cover her body, straddling her hips, alternating their attention back and forth; the play of their calloused hands was just rough enough...

"And what about a quim, hmmm?" she panted, daring to let one of her own palms light on Dagon's thighs and ease up over their breeches. "Played with those before too?"

"It has been a while, I will admit..."  
  
"Ahhh, fuck!" She pressed her knuckles against her mouth, attempting to crush it shut against the sounds of pleasure emerging from it – Dagon reached up and gently tugged her hand away to let them back out again. "Well I'm sure – ooooooooooooohhhh God! – you'll get the hang of it again."

"s'that a hint?"

And Aziraphale lost ability to verbalize for a while, as Dagon kissed up the cords of her neck to the point of her chin and back down again.

She didn't know how to play this game anymore, was the problem. It'd been so long since she'd had a new lover, since she'd had to seduce a new body and learn its language. Would she be required to beg for what she needed? Or would she have to demand it?

Dagon's hand crept behind her neck – then fisted tight against her scalp. Aziraphale melted.

"Hold still," the demon whispered. "Yeh wriggle like a marlin on tha hook."

They stretched out against her side, maddening clothing a barrier between the two bodies. They did not remove their clenched fist in her hair.

But their other hand did creep down to the join of her thighs, to stir the dewy curls that framed her labia. She spread open reflexively and Dagon chuckled. One calloused fingertip dipped... found and circled the head of her clit.

Aziraphale's mouth opened, offering up no greater intelligent meaning than a breathy "ohhhhhhhh..."

She rocked back and forth on that clever hand, feeling the tension growing, feeling the pull that the tautness of her thighs caused on those inner, buried wings of her clitoral erection.

"God, oooh God!" she cried on the first little spikes of orgasm – but it wasn't the big one, it wasn't enough and the need and frustration colored her moans.

"More?"

"I need – something. Inside me."

And Dagon's hands were long and slender, for as strong as they were. So slender, in fact – ha! It'd been ages since Aziraphale had entertained the memory of that one night with that young woman on the Isle of Lesbos who'd had little elven hands and, not coincidentally, also a small amphora of olive oil...

Dagon's fingers left her clit – just long enough to guide a smooth, heavy shaft into the angel's slick opening.

"All that exploring, all over tha castle... yet yeh missed tha toy box under my bed." The demon's tone was mock-teasing.

It was cool and then warm, some sort of carved ivory or bone perhaps; the heavy base of it rested on the bed and the shaft within her curved up against her g-spot before continuing deeper. It was made conscientiously for someone with a clitoris and vagina to enjoy hands-free, on the assumption that their hands were busy elsewhere.

So Dagon's hand returned to its busy work, one fingertip on either side of the angel's clit, stroking the little erection and teasing its tip.

Aziraphale squirmed on the carved cock, and its firmness and weight inside her took her the rest of the way to shuddering bliss. She reached over and caught her partner with arms around their neck, bringing them in for trembling kisses between moans.

"You," she breathed. "You. I want to do things to you."

"I dun need anythen, angel."

"You do, I can feel it – coming off you in waves. I can see it in the tension in your hips, in your spine. I want to make you feel good, Dagon. Please."

And more, she thought, drunk on the first pleasure of the night. Whatever was in the demon's pants, she wanted it. Whatever she found there, she'd work with it and they'd both get off. There were a billion ways to have sex and she wanted to try them all with this gorgeous creature who glowed like a pearl in the lightning strikes around the balcony.

She stroked her hand down Dagon's side, careful to stay on their ribcage as they passed over the linen bandage; she gripped their hipbone.

"When's the last time a girl gave you head?" Aziraphale murmured, kissing down the ridge of Dagon's jaw and down the line of their throat, rewarded to hear them catch their breath.

"Ages," the demon answered in a voice of distraction. Ohhh, those beautiful iridescent scales continued even further down...

"May I take off your trousers, Dagon?" Kissing to the base of their throat, flicking the point of her tongue in the hollow there.

"...yah!" came the reply in nothing louder than a gasp.

Thunder shook the slate roof tiles of the tower and Aziraphale was oblivious, setting aside the ivory dildo so she could wiggle down and work loose the leather laces of Dagon's clothing.

There... there...

"Ohhhhh... Dagon, you're glorious!"

Before the angel's gaze was revealed a delicious, tight little quim – the red wavy hair over the mons only a little darker than that which grew on Dagon's head, and scales shimmering across the sleek lips. Just as she'd thought: the crimson locks were wet with arousal, the flesh pink and pulsing. Primed for a licking, a fingering, perhaps even a good fucking. What else might be in that illicit toy box, after all?

Holding Dagon's wide blue gaze as the storm winds rattled the shutters, she insinuated her nude form between their legs.

"I want to please you, dearheart. I want you to feel so good tonight. May I do that to you?"

There was no answer, save Dagon's continued moray-stare and one of their hands, traveling across Aziraphale's fallen tresses up to cup the side of her head.

Silence means assent, she thought. She bent her lips to her lover's body.

Dagon was sweet and salty like the caramel truffles had been. Their clitoral shaft emerged a bit further out of their body than Aziraphale's did and she was jealous of that increased accessibility to the most sensitive of organs; she was able to suck it between her pursed lips like a little cock. The sensual intimacy of the act delighted her.

The demon bunched the duvet cover in their fists and groaned, back arching.

"Fuck yes," Aziraphale whispered, then wet two fingers in her mouth. Not that she really needed to; Dagon petals were as slick as the membranes of an eel. One finger sunk slowly to test this secret cavern's dimensions gently, then a second joined it. They were gripped as if in a fist and pulled deeper in.

Dagon cried out.

"Yes, my love!" the angel answered, then put her mouth back to its work.

The storm overhead that had threatened these shores and this castle for an entire week finally broke – a torrential downpour rolled down the roof and drummed the balcony floor, beating through the slits in the shutters to splash the first few interior inches of the floor. Aziraphale barely heard it, so great was her focus. Dagon was close, she could feel it, a feverish pitch of arousal that would consume them both when the demon--

Dagon's bare foot came up and caught Aziraphale just below the collar bone, shoving her backward, disengaging her hand and mouth as she fell to the cold and bruising floor.

"Get out!" the demon was screaming. Their voice twisted with terror and revulsion even as their body clenched in climax. "Dun touch me! **GET AWAY FROM ME!!**"

Deed suited Dagon's will in this world – abruptly Aziraphale found herself still naked and now on all fours among the dunes, pounded by a rain so intense that it seemed the ocean itself poured from the heavens. Blind and deaf in the hurricane, she could do nothing more than curl into a ball in the sodden grasses and try to protect her head and face as the tempest raged and lightning bolts struck the beach, exploding sand into black glass shrapnel where they stabbed the earth.

Dear Somebody, what did I do? she thought, spewing water out of her mouth and nose. Her arousal was shattered as completely as if she'd never felt it at all. Then again, drowning on shore will tend to have that effect on a person...

The bell-tone of Dagon fleeing the pocket-universe slapped her like a sonic boom. The storm did not abate.

Wait... wha-- ? Oh, no... no...

Aziraphale grimaced in sudden miserable understanding. Her tears were lost, mere drops in the endless squall.

What have I **done**? Oh, God – _**what have I**_ _**done?**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * The existence of crème brulee donuts is especially cruel to those of us gluten-free-for-health-reasons bitches. I'm just saying.
> 
> * I am a basic bitch (with somewhat disordered eating habits, again caused by health issues) who got her seductive meal from the "Seafood Seduction" menu listed [on this page.](https://seductionmeals.com/2008/01/the_perfect_seduction_meal/)
> 
> * Hmmm, it seems like our demon is getting themselves very drunk. Hmmm. "They drank like a... they drank a lot" is a reference to [this song with all the fish puns.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l1GvDWtccI)
> 
> * Let's all face it, those of us who have worn corsets: we really wish we could just lace/unlace them with miracles. 
> 
> * Aziraphale is momentarily salivating over the memory of having been fisted in her vaginal canal. I've never had the delight of that experience (yet) but I've heard it can be both intense and pleasurable.
> 
> So at the end of the chapter Aziraphale has potentially cheated on Crowley, potentially sexually traumatized someone that may or may not have been an abused virgin, and furthermore he didn't let himself think of Crowley even once during all of this -- even the most intimate parts. Especially the most intimate parts. 
> 
> Congrats! We've hit rock bottom. Here is your bottled water and trauma blankets. Please enjoy your stay.
> 
> (I've already written 2 pages of Chapter 9... and I promise you, it's gonna be worth it.)


	9. God Give You Grace To Purge This Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dagon, Lord of the Files and Master of Torments, foremost of the New Ones and currently one very distressed demon was apparently sitting motionless in their pulped-wood stronghold in the ever-shifting heart of the Stacks.
> 
> In reality they were dwelling just inside their own serene Appearance like a knight within a large and heavy set of plate armor, as they had for the last three days. Why? Because the Lord of the Files and Master of Torments does not, in fact, cry brokenheartedly for seventy or more hours straight with an option to continue doing so for the foreseeable future.
> 
> Dagon was, in fact, moping. And they had no one to blame other than themselves, and that chaffed them as raw as a hair shirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 8 was a hard chapter for me to write, for many reasons. (For example: that was the first chapter _in this entire series_ that merited a cut-file, which is basically an author saying "Just in case I have lost my mind and these words in this order aren't ACTUALLY a stinking pile of shit, I will put them In A Different File so I can retrieve them later.") 
> 
> One reason is because the Muse and I had to very carefully write two people with good intentions who wind up doing a Bad Thing to each other without actually meaning to, and that's difficult to do right. I hope we did.
> 
> Chapter 8 took me twenty days to struggle through, for one reason or another. Chapter 9, as you can see here, burst from the Muse's mouth and my fingertips in a bit less than four -- and it was over 13 pages in my editor, the longest chapter so far in either part of my series.
> 
> We're on our way back up, ladies and gentlemen. You may unfasten your seat-belts and move around the cabin.
> 
> The title is from ["The Prophet's Song" by Queen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzdjMLKKdgk) \-- if you've not heard it, or not heard it for a while, you may want to (re)acquaint yourself with it so you understand certain events...

The silence in Michael's internal reality was consummate, unbroken.

No breath of wind stirred. The heights were completely still.

Crowley stood on the very precipice of his lofty prison, spine straight, and leaned out over the void at the extension of the silver chains. He spread his empty hands and filled his lungs with the descending diaphragm of a trained soloist.

"AHHHHHHHH ahhhhhhhhh, people can you hear me?" he sang encouragingly to the distant mountains.

"_people can you hear me... people can you hear me..._" sang the granite cliffs in reply.

The demon smiled as the sweet notes faded.

"And now I know, and now I know, and now I know, and now I know that you can hear me," he told the barren center of his former sibling's world.

"_and_ _now I know, and now I know that you can hear me..._" confirmed the immaculate echoes.

The shimmering tones of the archangel's arrival trembled through the realm behind him.

"The earth will shake, in two will break --"  
  
"_the earth will shake, in two will break..._"  
  
"Hey!" Michael interjected. Neither Crowley nor the mountains acknowledged them.

"Death all around, around --"

"_death all around, around, around..._"

"HEY!" they screamed, voice rising in rage.

Crowley turned with startling speed. In an instant he was at the complete opposite end of the reach of his shackles, staring directly into Michael's gilt-accented face.

"Exactly how long **has** it been since God quit talking to the Metatron, Michael, old chap?" he asked, slitted eyes filled with glee.

Something in Michael's chest, perhaps even the neglected and forgotten organ known as their heart, felt as if it had dropped to the vicinity of their ankles.

"We do not speak of that!" they hissed – then gasped. "_How did you __**know**__?!_"

"Much like the hokey-pokey: thass wot it's all about, innit." He reached out and flicked the angel's lapels contemptuously – Michael was too flummoxed to even notice, much less recoil. "Ooooooh, I figure that right after our collective Near Apocalypse Experience, someone started asking impertinent questions. Namely, how the Host could have fallen so hard right on its big ugly face. Why God would have let Heaven wind up wearing so much custard pie. Why She didn't stop you precious high muckety-mucks from committing that embarrassing little oopsie. And that's when Metatron had to fess up and admit that they hadn't heard from the Almighty Herself in ohhhhhh.... **ages**, I'll bet. Since the day She whispered the world into existence. Maybe even before."

"But how--"

"How long has been since all you archangels lost your glory and started gilding your faces?"

Michael stared at him aghast, shocked paper-white and speechless.

"Oh, with a bit of effort I'm sure you can still summon it up for a good old-timey scourging as Heaven's warriors, of course – but it no longer just **blooms** there from the sheer welling-over of God's love now, does it. The true glory that should burn eternal on the hearths of your souls has just plain... gone out. Fortunately you lot figured out that mundane gold-leaf looks much the same. Maybe they're born with it – maybe it's Maybelline."

"How--" they tried again.

"All your snotty little questions," Crowley sneered, every trace of pretended good humor vanished. "About me and about my beloved. We can't have been the first inconvenient demon or disobedient angel in all of history – so what was so special about us? What was it you were prying so hard to try to figure out? And then, after I started rearranging Aziraphale's bookstore again in my memory, it all became clear.

"See, he loves to collect Bibles with typos. I think something about the subversion of the Word of God fascinates him. God could surely stop it if She cared to... so why didn't She? But he got a bit ahead of himself with the 'Buggre Alle This Bible', because it contains just that little bit of extra flair... And I quote: 'And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying Where is the flaming sword which was given unto thee?'"

Michael's color had returned as two magenta smears, one high on each sharp cheekbone. They ground their clenched teeth.

"The **last** recorded time God interacted directly with _**an angel**_ of any sort, whatsoever – She spoke to _**mine**_," Crowley emphasized. "Any instance referenced after that was with the Metatron, who got his instructions from – well, from sweet baby Fuck-All, as far as I can tell. And that just... fucking... kills you. _**Doesn't**_ it."

"The wind," the archangel said instead. "It's stopped."

"Oh, Michael: do you really think that you can let someone else stay within your soul, your heart of hearts, for any length of time... and remain entirely unchanged, yourself?"  
  
At that instant, with no other word nor any will worked upon them, the mountains all around caroled: "_listen to the man listen-listen to the man listen to the mad-__**listen to the mad MAN!**_"

The voices built in cascading, sussurating harmonies, carried on a sudden blast of wind that battered directly against Michael's face and chest. Crowley's eyes blazed with power.

Michael fled.

Dagon, Lord of the Files and Master of Torments, foremost of the New Ones and currently one very distressed demon was apparently sitting motionless in their pulped-wood stronghold in the ever-shifting heart of the Stacks.

In reality they were dwelling just inside their own serene Appearance like a knight within a large and heavy set of plate armor, as they had for the last three days. Why? Because the Lord of the Files and Master of Torments does not, in fact, cry brokenheartedly for seventy or more hours straight with an option to continue doing so for the foreseeable future.

Dagon was, in fact, moping. And they had no one to blame other than themselves, and that chaffed them as raw as a hair shirt.

It was that intoxicating way the angel had... of just making things seem.. okay. Like you could tell her things, and she'd actually hear them. She'd accept them. And she might actually love you anyway.

Not how other angels claimed they did – but **really** loved.

Lord Dagon didn't know – maybe the other bastards in here (and, it being Hell, there were some **serious** bastards about) hadn't ever experienced any sort of actual love, and so they didn't know it to miss it. And maybe the demons who had been Fallen angels had been broken or had that part burned out of them, that they no longer cared what Love was. Nor did they seem to want to feel it or receive it in turn.

But Dagon – who had fallen only into the sea, and that only for love of a ship and a crew and their Captain – had felt it, and lost it, and missed it. More than they had ever dared to admit, even to themselves.

The demon had fought the urge for days after Aziraphale had healed their wounds. Go back, inside. There's the churning sea. There's that darkening storm in the twilight. But here we are, safe on the shore.

And up above us in the castle is the gentle candlelight and a warm fireplace, and dinner, and –

And the curvy little thing with her blue eyes and sweet ways and soft arms.

And in the dim light, and in the ice-wine... she was so like their Captain. So easy for Dagon to let themselves pretend those gold tresses wore a tint of fiery red.

Gráinne, shaped Dagon's lips silently, behind the sealed visor of their Appearance. The name that Niamh had never spoken aloud in life. Her name was Gráinne and by God above, yes, _did I __**love**__ her_.

Oh indeed, the Captain had those little carved boxes made for all her long-term crew – all her chosen family. The rest were stored safe, in a locked chest in the library. It was only Niamh's that was tucked beneath her side of her big bed.

It lay beneath her body at night, Niamh had thought more than once... and ached.

On her bed with the scent of those sweet herbs all around, and the wine in my head and those glorious breasts...

Dagon in the here and now bit their lip and let it bleed a while.

And her own scent, and her noises, the noises she'd made with her lovers and husbands in that bed as I was tucked in my own little fortress a wall away, fucking my fingers and shoving my own noises into my pillow so as not to disturb or distract them.

Because I wasn't a little girl anymore, to hide in her mother's cupboard from the evils of the night. Some things in the night were hot and pleasurable and good, and I craved them.

But all I ever wanted was to have them from _her_...

I didn't know they made toys like that, before Captain mentioned one evening that they did. She'd teased me about not taking lovers of my own, but not mean. Never cruel.

She always knew more than she let on.

She gave me the first one then, straight from the maker's hands. Told me of the little hidden shops in one or two particular ports, so I'd know where to get more and different ones when I wanted them. She grinned and blushed; took me by the shoulders and raised up on tip-toe to buss my forehead as she did sometimes. "A girl does have _some_ needs of her own," she said archly. "Whether or na she wants tha rest of tha man attached ta what satisfies them for her."

And that night she left me in charge of the castle while she left on a brief errand for a few days.

And for several evenings I slept alone in her big bed, and tried out my new toy, and imagined she was using it on me and I on her... and for once I was as loud as I ever cared to be.

Dagon in the here and now licked the blood and tears from their sore, stinging lips.

So that curvy little body in the lavender-scented bed... older than me but so beautiful, so wonderful, and not my mother as she had joked, dammit! By God above, to kiss here and there as I had wanted. To take suck at those nipples; to rein her by the hair as she liked her lovers to do – and then to go with more care and time than they ever did with my fingers, to give her her bliss.

Then she reached for me afterwards – and I knew. She wasn't my Captain; she wasn't my Gráinne. I couldn't pretend any more and it was wrong of me to try. It had all gone wrong.

Dagon in the here and now began to weep again, more heavily. Would all the salt-water of the ocean pass through their eyes?

But the angel, so good and kind. She wanted to please me, so much. And I who had already sinned against her – who was I to tell her no?

She was so gentle, so sweet. She did not touch under my bindings; she seemed to know that that part of me is still unbearably private, so filled with uncertainty and discomfort.

But my other parts... that between my legs, my slit and my little cock-bud. I'd never had someone else... and it felt so much, so intense... so good.

And I was so close, in her hands, in her mouth. And I wanted to, and I feared to, in her hands, in her mouth.

But she wasn't... she wasn't my... my beautiful Captain. My Gráinne!

And the specter always, all my life, of being so small in the dark, and of hands trying to touch but these weren't men's hands they were small as I was small they were a woman's hands but not my Captain's hands nor her mouth and not her love when I wanted to cry out my love and I wanted to come in my Captain's arms and her mouth and.

Dagon in the here and now tilted their head back as they had done so often in the last seventy or so hours and waited, and controlled their breathing, and waited, and the sobs stopped once more. The tears slipped down well-worn tracks across their temples and into their earlobes.

All that angel had tried to do was love me, Dagon thought, in a way that she and I both thought I was wanting to be loved. And for that kindness, I hurt her bad. Shoved her off me, screamed at her, and ran away. And I still haven't had the courage to go back since.

I deserve to be in Hell, Dagon thought.

The desk phone rang.

"YOU HAVE REACHED DAGON, MASTER OF TORMENTS AND LORD--"

"Shut up, it's me!"

"--OW MAY I HINDER YOU TODAY?" the demon plodded onward, contempt momentarily triumphing over their misery.

"No more nonsense," hissed Michael's voice through the earpiece. "Some serious bull feces has gone down with my prisoner just now and I need to talk with you _now, __**today**__,_ no more _**excuses**_!"

Dagon opened their mouth to proceed to tell Michael exactly who the angel could boss around (aka, absolutely _**not even**_ _**one**_ single entity among the Infernal Host, much less the Lord of the Files, etc) and exactly where they could stick their demands (aka, deep in a place where the sun did not shine, even on a holier-than-thou halo-wearer) – when a realization dawned.

This was not Michael's regular high-horse bitchery. The strident anger in their tone masked a deeper and more powerful emotion.

Terror. Abject, pants-wetting, tit-quivering terror.

_They aren't scared enough, _whispered the voice of traumatic memory. _Do you think they're really trying? _

Dagon's blooded lips curved into something approximating a smile.  
  
"Right yeh are, Lord Michael. How does Saint James's Park suit yeh?"

"Thirty minutes," they snarled, and the line went dead.

We're way past any apologies now, Dagon thought – but getting to hear what's made YOU scared might just be worth the effort of a little stroll.

Heaven and Hell both have their own pidgin languages to describe circumstances, experiences, and objects unique to either – but only Germany had a word for the emotion welling in Dagon's breast just now, and it was _schadenfreude_.

Forty-three minutes later (because fuck you, Michael) a properly composed Lord Dagon sauntered by the lake gripping a small paper bag filled with torn cubes of stale bread. It was the done thing, apparently. In the rapidly shifting social mores of the latter centuries, Dagon had mostly gotten by through watching others for a few minutes, then emulating to the best of their abilities.

They opened the bag and scattered a few small chunks to the waiting waterfowl. At least there was very little changing **their** incomparable bastardy, even across centuries. "How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks," indeed.

"That's very bad for them, you know," growled a voice behind their right shoulder.

Dagon reached for another little handful. "I know. I _am_ a demon, after all. It's like junk food ta them. Turns out when tha young ones eat too much bread they can develop a condition that scientists call 'angel wing' that makes them unable ta fly at all. Dun yeh find that amusen?"

"We're in some deep cacky now, Dagon."

"_**Yeh**_ are in whatever deep cacky yeh're referencing," the demon answered serenely. "_**I'm**_ in tha park feeden ducks."

"If he knows such horrible secrets about Heaven, there's no telling what he knows about Hell."

Dagon rolled the top of the bag closed, then turned to look into the archangel's pale and pinched face. Their hair had escaped in tendrils (small, but marked nonetheless) from its normal severe and perfect styling. The dove gray suit had slightly darker perspiration stains on the elbows of the sleeves where each hand had spasmodically closed on the other arm, hugging the body to contain its panic.

Oh – this was satisfying, indeed!

"_**What**_ horrible secrets?"

Dagon's tone was precise and quietly vicious. Their eyebrows arched over iridescently-scaled cheeks and a tolerant smile.

Michael twitched, then reached out and took the demon by the forearm and hauled them into the shadow of the nearest oak. Lord Dagon - who at least once (over two hundred and thirty years and another lifetime ago) had broken the nose, cheekbone, and forearm of a random drunkard who'd attempted something like the same - permitted the angel to do so.

"He knew... about this!" Michael whispered. They rubbed a thumb across their cheek, then the back of Dagon's hand.

The demon stared, dumbfounded. Glory lay across their knuckles and did not burn.

"Gilt," they answered. "Yeh lot gild yur damned faces, like tha frame of a whore-house mirror."

"It used to be glory, real glory! It used to shine right out of us archangels, God's own glory!... but it gradually stopped and we couldn't figure out why. The lower ranks – we – we had to do something, you see? If they'd lost faith in--"

"Sure I see. An' what else."

Michael swallowed hard; anxious bile made a clicking noise in the back of their throat.

"God. He knew... that God no longer talked to Metatron. That none of us have heard God's voice since... since before the creation of the earth."

"None? None of yeh at all?"

The angel's expression grew conflicted.

"Only one."

Dagon opened their mouth to ask "Who?" – and knew.

And _laughed._

"What the fiddlesticks are you chortling about?!"

"Yeh can just go ahead an' say 'fuck', yeh know. Why keep up tha charade?"

"This is no laughing matter!"  
  
"Oh but it is!" Dagon crowed. Michael shushed them frantically, looking all around at humans who were as oblivious as they'd always be to the dramas of the Hosts. "Look at yeh all, prancing about with painted faces, playen kindergarten games an' maken up tha rules as yeh go, sayen _**feces**_ an' _**fiddlesticks**_ an' _**oh**_ _**gosh darn**_ an' looken down yur noses at everyone else in tha universe an' yeh – yeh – yeh're tha same poor lost dumb savages as tha **rest** of us! Yeh whited sepulchers! Yeh Pharisees!!"

Michael reared back and slapped them across the face; Dagon caught the back-hand before it contacted their other cheek and held the wrist in a grip that could crack walnuts. But their laughter hadn't stopped – if anything it had gone underground, a low rumbling chuckle filled with menace.

"This isn't how it's supposed to work at all," Michael whimpered as shocked tears filled their dark eyes. "You're my opposite, my complement. I've just shared things with you -- secret things! You're supposed to care. You're supposed to understand!"

"An' who told yeh _**that**_ 'bull feces'? _**God?!**_"

Michael lunged, their body pushing Dagon's back against the tree.

And **kissed** the demon.

They've seen this before, thought Dagon. In movies, maybe – how two people argue and then somehow managed to be overcome in the throes of mutual passion even though they hate each other. Or maybe they've seen this with Aziraphale and her demon: mock battles that look real to onlookers ignorant of their private jokes and games, as mine and Captain's sparring must have looked to the crew sometimes. And when it ends in love, they have no idea what was underneath it all – the foundation on which that affection is actually built.

And if I opened my jaw a centimeter, thought Dagon further, I could bite their bottom lip entirely off.

So they parted their lips... and kissed Michael back. Kissed them and in the moment pretended again that this was their Captain, beloved and yearned for.

The bag of bread cubes dropped to the turf, unnoticed and unmissed, for the geese to find ten minutes later. Dagon let go of the angel's wrist and used both hands to cup their face, draw them deeper in, breathe their breath, binding them together.

Forbidden fruit is the sweetest, after all.

Gradually Dagon let go, straightening to their full height so the kiss would break. Michael stood so close that the heat radiated from their power suit. Their lips were ever so slightly bruised from the crush of their mouths. And, looking down into their pleading eyes Dagon could read their soul as if its contents were printed on their retinas.

I could own them, thought Dagon – if I took them now. Where? Doesn't matter. Here on the grass for all that they cared, or that the humans would notice. If I took them some place and kissed them again and again. Kissed their throat, the insides of their wrists. Unwrapped them slowly, like a gift. Licked the inside of their thighs. Played with their nipples, and whatever they have between their legs – have them change it up if I wish. Used my toys on them.

I could make them do anything for that, thought Dagon – because they want to be loved and they don't know how and they don't even know what love really is. But I could make them think I loved them and for that they would mobilize the army of Heaven on my tiniest whim. I could rule Above from the heart of the Stacks, Below.

Dagon looked down into Michael's eyes as if looking into Dagon's own, and understood many things in just a few milliseconds.

All Dagon felt was tired.

But that wouldn't be right to do, they thought. And while I may be a demon, I do still know right from wrong.

… so it's time that I start acting like it.

"You," they said carefully, "have no idea of what you actually want. And even if you did, you would not be getting it from me – ever."

Then the demon turned themselves inward, back to the little private plane of reality in their soul and the beach that they had avoided for over seventy hours, leaving Michael to whatever future awaited them.

Dagon's course, however, was already set.

It was still raining, there on the sand.

Dagon stood in the deluge and let it wash their mouth clean of the kiss, their cheeks clean of the tears.

"Enough of this," they said – and the clouds rolled back. The stars sparkled immaculate and distant in the vast dark well of the sky.

Dagon appraised the remote white face of the moon. How, by God above, have I loved you too, dear old Luna. Had I truly let Hell take from me the ability to love these last two-odd centuries? Was it so shamefully easy for them to do?

Ahhh, let's have some light for this meeting. The sun inched back up over the waves, reaching rosy fingertips across the roof of the world, veiling the moon in orange and pink silks.

Red sky at night, sailors' delight...

Lord Dagon dried a large rock with a thought, and sat down on one half of it.

_Aziraphale_, they said after a moment. _I think we have much we need to discuss. Would you do me the honor of meeting me down on the shore?_

"I'm here," said a voice from a bit higher up on the dunes.

The angel had apparently found a bit of flotsam that included some pieces of canvas; she had wrapped up in it but otherwise had not sought shelter from the flood-rains.

She looked the part.

Dagon unleashed a string of oaths they'd learned during their years in the rigging as the naked and bedraggled woman descended, wearing the sail-cloth as her only covering. She too, from the swollen and reddened state of her eyes and nose, had apparently been crying.

They took her hands in theirs, and with a minor miracle she was clean and dry. With a moderate miracle she was dressed in the cream colored day-suit that she had been wearing upon her capture, every detail complete. It was tight across her feminine chest and thighs but not unbearably so.

The demon drew her gently down on the rock and tried to smile. "Why didna yeh go back inside tha castle an' wait it out?"

"That is your personal space that you have loved, Lord Dagon – I didn't know if you would have wanted me to."

God above, thought Dagon – she was moping, too. Aren't we both a pair of dramatic bitches.

They opened their mouth to reply when Aziraphale plunged onward: "I'm so sorry, Lord Dagon. I never should have... made an advance on you like that. I saw that you were drinking that night, perhaps to excess – and it is quite incorrect to take advantage of someone who doesn't have their full faculties available."

"But--"

"As well as the fact that you had later given me what is called a 'soft no' about me touching you, and I pushed past your objection and did not uphold your consent and," a quiet sob shook her, "-- and made quite a few other mistakes, so I can only deeply and humbly profess my regret that I caused you hurt and distress."

"Angel. Just... stop talken a moment."

Aziraphale took herself in hand with a visible effort, then nodded. Her eyes welled up but the tears did not spill.

"I appreciate what yeh have said ta me here, Aziraphale – but I think my sin against yeh was tha deeper one. Two of them, as a matter of fact."

"I'm afraid that I don't see how?"

Dagon gently squeezed the angel's hands, looking into her heart-shaped face. No... in this light, I can see she wasn't much like my Captain at all. I should have let her be herself.

"First of all: that I wanted ta do those things with yeh, pretending yeh were someone else all along. An' that was na right. It was na respectful ta yeh."

She nodded again, silently. If the words were a blow to her pride, she didn't flinch.

"Tha second of all... heh. It was something that tha Dark Lady had explained ta me once. Other pirates made slaves of their captives – low-born or high – bought an' sold them, even used them for sex. I asked her once why she didna do any of tha same; she treated them quite gently in comparison an' never ever took any ta her bed nor let any of her crew do so.

"She said that tha imbalance of power made it impossible for captives ta properly consent ta their captors, ever. If they were na free ta leave, they were na **truly** free ta decline. She said it was a form of rape, an' she would na have rape in her ranks. She was serious about it too; she keel-hauled more than one deserving bastard for tryen it."

"That wasn't all she said, was it," answered Aziraphale, not letting go of Dagon's hands.

The demon smiled sadly. "Nah, it wasna. She said 'yeh do na fuck yur prisoners, an' yeh do na fuck yur children.' Children rely on yeh, look ta yeh for their food an' shelter an' safety. Yeh love them an' take care of them, but yeh do na take them ta bed."

"And that's why she turned you down."  
  
Now it was Dagon's turn to nod wordlessly, half-choked with emotion. "Na too long after that storm that drove us inta one bed in tha library, I gathered up my courage an' confronted her about it. First she said she didna practice favortism in tha ranks – a sailor rose or fell on their own merit only. An', 'her favors were just that,' she said... an' winked."

The demon grinned down at Aziraphale's hands, which had become unfocused behind a veil of their unshed tears. "But then she told me tha second bit, about na bedding yur own children. An' she made me an offer – ta bond me free, if I wanted. I could take my share of our gold an' stay on shore under some new master, or sign on for a different sailing ship... an' if I did, she would take me ta bed."

"But?"

They lifted one finger. "When she _**could**_, was tha catch. She was often at sea, an' when she was na she generally had one husband or another, plus a lover or two in several ports. She was a woman who did as she pleased, as often as she pleased. An' even though she'd na had many female lovers, she'd had enough ta know that she liked it occasionally. A spice, she called it. But she would haveta do it when she had tha time an' tha privacy ta permit it."

"And who would know when that might be."

"Just so. I might go months without seeing her, meybe even a year or more – especially if I was out on another ship. 'An' I'd be losen my own cabin joy,' she said, an' sounded grieved... even though I'd been apprentice quartermaster for two years by that point."

"So you didn't leave."

"So I didna leave. I _**couldna**_ leave her, Aziraphale. I loved her so. It was better ta love her an' ta be her joy every day an' sleep alone still, than ta only light each other's lives once a year or so. I never regretted it, even ta tha last."

The angel squeezed the demon's hands.

"So I've decided ta let yeh go," Dagon said solemnly.

"... what?"

"Yur lover, yur demon... has been out there in his own prison among tha archangels stirring tha kettle a mort fierce; I figure if he's na free by now it wun take him much longer ta get free, especially if yeh're able ta help somehow. But yeh'll haveta go straight from my realm ta yur own – both Hosts will be gunnen for yeh an' I, as soon as they find out we're gone."

"We?"

"I'm na so fond of getten wet as I'd stay for my own holy-water bath, if an' when Hell finds out I set yeh free."

"But... why?"

The demon exhaled slowly. "I have been through much, in life an' afterlife. But nothen I've endured is an excuse ta stop being tha person Captain woulda wanted me ta be - that **_I_** would want ta be."

Aziraphale sat back and studied Dagon's pearlescent-scaled face for a long moment... remembering how she'd last seen it in Hell, as she'd worn Crowley's Appearance to endure his execution.

"Dagon, you've changed."

"With yeh _here_, within me," they murmured, "could I have done otherwise?"

They drew the angel gently onto her feet in the red light of the setting sun.

"If yeh dun mind, take yur real form," Dagon said. "Tha one yeh prefer, that yeh wore when I brought yeh here."  
  
Non-plussed, Aziraphale obeyed. The frame beneath the suit shifted and settled; the tummy to its proper place, the hips and bosom shrinking to balance it. The entire bone-structure lengthened. The sensation of the collar and shoulders and waist-band of his garments settling appropriately into place was quite pleasant.

The angel was himself once more.

Dagon held his hands and looked directly across into his tear-stained eyes, searching as if they could read something written there. Whatever they saw made them grin for one blinding instant, like a blade of sunlight tossed back by a breaking wave. Then, immediately solemn in the next moment, they nodded decisively.

"I'm na afraid of yeh, anymore."

"Dagon, where **will** you go? What will you do? All of Hell and probably Heaven will be after you for this."

Dagon did the second most unwise thing they'd done in the last hour: they told him.

He nodded with quiet satisfaction, still weighted with sadness and guilt. "Just another fish in the sea, mmm? That's brilliant. I needn't worry then. And don't you worry either. When... when he gets out... we'll come and find you. We'll find a way to keep all of us safe. I promise you that."

Whether or not they believed him, Aziraphale could not have said.

"Dagon... may I kiss your forehead?"

Was it the sunset? He thought they blushed, although their expression did not change.

"Yah."  
  
Gently releasing their hands he brushed their cheek with the lightest touch of his fingertips, then pressed his lips to their glowing scales.

"Thank you, Dagon – for your hospitality, and for... everything. Be well, my dear, until we shall meet again."

Then he stepped backwards through the hole he opened in his own soul, and was gone from the twilight shore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Somebody, I gotta admit -- I was so proud of Crowley getting to use the mountains to sing the harmonic bridge of The Prophet's Song, and using it to freak Michael out.
> 
> * Ahhhh, children of the land: love is still the answer, take my hand!
> 
> * This chapter has also previously been subtitled "The One Where Crowley Answers The Questions Michael Was Really Asking" and "How Crowley Gets His Groove Back."
> 
> * It is intentional that for most of Dagon's moping, we have difficulty telling which person the pronoun "she" references -- Aziraphale or the Dark Lady of Doona?
> 
> * It may not be a coincidence that the first time Dagon says the name of Ní Mháille is also the first time we hear them reference God specifically.
> 
> * Having served my time in telephone technical support, Dagon's phone greeting (and their passive-aggressive use of it) gives me such glee.
> 
> * Where the sun doesn't shine? [Isn't that that place in Lancre?](https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/The_Place_Where_The_Sun_Does_Not_Shine)
> 
> * "Abject, pants-wetting, tit-quivering terror" -- since Dagon is not a big fan of testicles and doesn't possess a set themselves, they are unfamiliar and not particularly concerned with "ball-shriveling terror".
> 
> * "How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks." -- Dorothy L Sayers, Gaudy Night
> 
> * I discovered "angel wing" condition for ducks in my research of 'why is feeding bread to ducks canceled, again?' and it was just too perfect not to mention.
> 
> * [The dreaded Cacky.](https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/The_Cacky)
> 
> * While Dagon has never entered a whore-house nor seen any mirrors of the same, they have Opinions about how things are supposed to look within one. Altogether, Dagon's Opinions are probably much nicer than general realities.
> 
> * ["Don't think 'cause I understand, I care. Don't think because I'm talking, we're friends."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpEY3lhayio)
> 
> * Everyone was so upset at Aziraphale last chapter! I hope this and the next one helps to redeem him somewhat. In this story, those who triumph are those who have become (or remained) the most true to themselves, despite what adversity they faced.


	10. But Touch My Tears With Your Lips

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I still have no idea how you're taking all of it so nonchalantly,” he sniffed.
> 
> “I'm not Heaven: I don't throw out the whole angel over one mistake, even if I thought you'd made one, which I don't. I think we both learned some important information here. The first being that, if either one of us are ever kidnapped, it's no-holds-barred. I don't care what you have to do to your kidnappers in order to get out and come back to me safe and sound. Seduce them, give them food poisoning, murder them in their sleep, tickle them until they fart themselves unconscious – nothing's a crime when it comes down to reuniting us.”
> 
> “And what else?”
> 
> “Oh, that it's rougher on you to force yourself not to think of me than to fall apart because of it. It's okay to fall apart... because I figure in time you'll pull yourself back together. And if you don't, you can just wait for your adoring demon to come rescue you.”
> 
> Now Aziraphale did laugh, a short suppressed little cough.
> 
> “I'm being completely honest here,” Crowley answered serenely. “Because technically I was free about, oh... ninety minutes before you were.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What up, y'all? Your favorite bitch and her Muse are back at last, too goddamn sober to write all the notes that go with this post but damned if we aren't going to try it. Thought I'd lead you into the holiday season in proper style. You know: with 10 pages of angst and hurt/comfort. Secrets Are Revealed! Buttons Are Popped! Michael Continues To Be A Dry Sandy Cunt! (We assume; they don't actually appear in this chapter.)
> 
> Man, I was unprepared for the remaining Aziraphale RAEG on several fronts, and maybe I should have been? From the Author's Chair (which is more of a divan/fainting couch of memory foam and lies) it was obvious to me how Aziraphale got where he got and why, and how he did the best he could and, in this particular instance, Failed Entirely. 
> 
> Hopefully this chapter will give more detail on the nature of his failure, and I'll support my points with chapter numbers in the end notes.
> 
> I owe people both comments and emails, and I promise I'll get on them by this time tomorrow. For those of you who sent variations on "You Brute!" -- I understand, and I'm here to respond. For those of you who commented in love and trust and support: thank you from the bottom of my kinky little heart, because you remain the wind beneath my wings.
> 
> Clever eyes will also note that the chapter count has gone up to 14 -- it'll actually be 13 solid chapters with something of an Epilogue. This chapter's title as well as all remaining ones will be lyrics from "Who Wants To Live Forever?" by Queen, of course.
> 
> No further ado; away we go!

The angel's feet touched down in the little desert realm he had shared for the last two and a half years with his demon, right beside the small open-sided canopy.

"Crowley!"

The sense was all around Aziraphale, the humming warmth of that adored presence, of the creator of a soul-world being resident within it – but the tent was empty save for its one hanging oil-lamp, and the faraway dunes were filled with little flowering plants but innocent of footprints. He turned in a slow circle.

"Crowley!"

He lost every remaining ounce of composure; his voice broke with strain as he cried out again.

"_**Crowley!**_"

There was a fairly loud **pop**, the sound that a lot of air makes when displaced at once.

"Right here, angel," the affectionate tone chuckled behind him, filled with humor and love despite its fatigue.

Aziraphale whirled – and yes, oh Somebody, there, his shoes dangling from one hand so he could stand barefoot on the beautiful hand-knotted rugs of their hidden dwelling.

No. This was too easy.

"This is a dream," Aziraphale gasped, reeling. "Or else some sort of trick. Or I'm going mad at last."

"No trick, beloved – I'm real. I escaped." But before he could say another word his lover had fallen to his knees in the sand.

"You'll never forgive me, my dearest -- I have sinned against you utterly. You may as well fill your hands with Hell-fire and destroy me."

Aziraphale's eyes were red but dry; his nostrils were pinched and his face bone-white. He looked more miserable and terrified than Crowley had ever seen him – even on the day of the Near-Apocalypse.

Because even then my beautiful angel thought we'd muddle through it somehow. We just simply had to, and that was that. He never ever lets himself truly believe otherwise... until now.

Amazing.

Crowley felt his own weariness recede; he was home and he was safe for the foreseeable future. He was home and his angel was near. No matter what else had happened in the intervening days, they were together again – and together they would make it well.

He tossed his shoes onto the sand and reached out, taking Aziraphale by the upper arms and pulling him bodily onto the carpets. "I'm not doing a single thing – much less **that** – until you and I can talk through whatever it is that would make you think that way."

Aziraphale kicked off his shoes before they touched the rug's surface, folding himself into a cross-legged seating position morosely. Crowley matched him, sitting so close that their knees and toes were touching. He took his lover's limp hands in his.

"Start from the beginning; I'll listen."

Lord Dagon had been Aziraphale's jailer, a realization which had originally surprised Crowley. Then again... Lord Beelzebub was probably too important to bother with the task and Lord Hastur, well. If Hastur had the imagination and mental focus that God gave a fruit-fly, Crowley would be shocked senseless. Dagon as a dark-horse unknown among the Lords of the Infernal Host actually left them as the most reasonable choice for the job.

"I'm not even sure why they're _**in**_ Hell – when you get them on their own, they're actually very decent."

Hazy fragments of old rumor floated through Crowley's mind. "I think I may know, but it's not relevant right now."  
  
The angel went on to detail his fairly clever temptations and manipulations; the demon grinned with justifiable pride.

And then, in halting words, Aziraphale told about how in female form he'd tried and succeeded in seducing the demon – and how everything had fallen apart because of it.

"And that's why... I deserve nothing from you. I deserve to be destroyed."

Crowley was looking down, studying Aziraphale's chilly fingers, watching his own thumbs make slow circles over the tops of his knuckles.

"Which part of all of this bothers you so much, beloved?"

The angel hitched a sob, then bit down viciously on his guilt. "I didn't think about you the entire time I was in Dagon's prison-world... and then I cheated on you."

"Well, that sounds like two things."

Aziraphale nodded miserably. Crowley raised his gaze to the top of the angel's bowed pate and smiled with fondness.

"Let's start with the second one. You didn't cheat on me, angel – not in the slightest."

His head jerked up in surprise and Crowley grinned. Nothing like disagreeing with him to get him out of a funk. More than one exciting and entirely satisfactory episode with his "little naked-time friend" had begun in just such a fashion...

"Think about it," he overrode the upcoming objection. "If our regular routine had not been... interrupted and you'd met Lord Dagon under some social circumstances – pretend they were just a regular human and not a demon or summat – would you have wanted to fuck them without talking with me first?"

"They're nice enough," the seraph answered stiffly, "but no. Not in the slightest."

"Well, it had only been about nine or ten days of contact. Maybe you'd want to get to know them better first. I'm sure a few of your previous lovers are still alive, beloved: at any time in the last two and a half years we've been together, have you sought any of them out for sexual congress without letting me know?"

"Never!" His tone was aghast.

"There you have it, then. You haven't 'cheated' on me at all. You were kidnapped and imprisoned away from me, and in such dire circumstances you were using every single weapon in your arsenal to try to get an advantage with your kidnapper. Dear Somebody – if I'd had even the tiniest scrap of belief that it might work, I absolutely would have tried it on Michael."

Aziraphale met his eyes at last, color rising in his cheeks, his open mouth a perfect scandalized circle.

"Serious as a judge – but I've known them too long to even bother. I know better. Attempting to seduce Michael would be like making durian jam. No, I mean it, really!" he protested gently at Aziraphale's wry giggle. "There's probably a way to do it, but I have no idea how – and even if I did, I definitely wouldn't find the results very appetizing. Can you even _**imagine?!**_"

"I can't – nor do I want to!"

Crowley raised one of Aziraphale's hands to his lips, and pressed a kiss to the back of it.

"So let's talk about why you didn't think about me at all, those days."

Aziraphale was trembling with suppressed emotion; Crowley could feel it through his fingers.

"Because if I did... I would be a wreck. Utterly useless. And I couldn't allow myself to be weak, then. I had to find my way out and back to you."

A soul as hard as a diamond, inside the marshmallow exterior, thought Crowley – but diamonds will shatter if you hit them in the right spot.

"I know I was," he answered in a whisper. "I collapsed on that mountain-top in Michael's realm and cried for what must have been a full day or so. Just wept like a little child, thinking about never getting to hold you again."

Aziraphale shut his eyes and nodded wordlessly. A single tear slipped from each lid and down his cheeks. Getting closer, thought Crowley.

"Ever since we met, I can't remember the last time I went even a day without thinking about you, beloved. No, hold on – I don't say that to make you feel guilty. I say that because I think we're uncovering an important point. For over six thousand years, no matter what I was doing or how far away you were or how long it'd been since I'd last seen you, I thought about you at least once a day. When did you start thinking about me? On the regular, I mean."

The angel freed a hand and Crowley let him; he reached into his inner vest pockets and pulled out a linen handkerchief, wiping his cheeks and nose.

"You know... I think it must have been much the same for me? You were... you were something special, even from the start. I'd find my thoughts drifting toward you at the oddest times – any moment they weren't otherwise occupied, and quite a few when they were!"

"Had you ever actively tried to **stop** thinking about me, before this?"

He put his handkerchief back in his vest – to give himself a moment to answer, Crowley surmised. But then he laid his hand back in the demon's once more, and that was a good sign.

"I think... just the one big one."

"The nineteenth century," Crowley finished for him.

Aziraphale exhaled slowly; his cerulean eyes were filling with tears again. "I **missed** you... so much. More than I could ever say."

Now it was the demon's turn to swallow hard, to blink and clear his own gaze. "I'd figured out some time before that what I felt for you was love; I had no idea if you would ever love me in return. Loving someone for so long, unrequited – it wears at a soul, I think. So I slept awhile... only to dream you, and in my dreams you and I were together, and so very happy."

"But I was awake. And I was alone."

"I know, angel. And while you'd had lovely sexual adventures with mortals for ages before... the nineteenth century was a different caliber, wasn't it?"  
  
Aziraphale raised his hand to his face and took Crowley's with it, to press his cheek into the demon's welcoming palm.

"It was. I did a lot of self-harming behaviors, that century. Including, even... falling in love... with a mortal."  
  
Now it was Crowley's mouth that dropped open in surprise. "Did you now."

"It was Oscar. Yes."  
  
Nearly seven years since those steamy, breathless, yearning moments locked in a closet together – Crowley had no need now to ask who "Oscar" was. But Aziraphale had never really spoken about that time, and even less about Mr. Wilde.

This was more than he'd ever admitted before, though Crowley had speculated as much.

"And he was good to you... while I slept?" he asked tenderly, forgiving everything that needed no forgiveness – but had sought it anyway.

Aziraphale nodded once more, tears now flowing freely.

"Come into our bed," Crowley urged. "Come here and let me hold you, and you let it all out." He slithered backwards, leading his angel by one hand who stumbled after him, up and into the pillows, down under their favorite blanket.

Then they were embraced tightly, Aziraphale's head on Crowley's right shoulder and their arms around each other, holding as if there was nothing else in the world, in this universe or any other. Aziraphale wept and his tears soaked Crowley's jacket until the demon shrugged out of it, then vanished it and his shirt to some unknown corner of the universe.

It'll be a long time until I want to wear any opera outfit anyway, he thought, and lay his angel on his bare chest, fitting his hand to the hand-print of glory that bound them both together.

Aziraphale wept out ten days of terror and loss and pressure and loneliness. Crowley stroked his hair and murmured words of affection, and miracled up a bottle of watered wine with which to keep the both of them hydrated.

"So what lessons did we learn from this?" the demon asked smoothly, when it seemed that the worst of the storm had abated.

"I still have no idea how you're taking all of it so nonchalantly," he sniffed.

"I'm not Heaven: I don't throw out the whole angel over one mistake, even if I thought you'd made one, which I _**don't**_. I think we both learned some important information here."

"We did?"

"Absolutely. The first being that, if either one of us are ever kidnapped, it's no-holds-barred. I don't care what you have to do to your kidnappers in order to get out and come back to me safe and sound. Seduce them, give them food poisoning, murder them in their sleep, tickle them until they fart themselves unconscious – nothing's a crime when it comes down to reuniting us."

He felt the snort of Aziraphale's exhalation, that would have been a chuckle if he was fully feeling himself again. "And what else?"

"Oh, that it's rougher on you to force yourself not to think of me than to fall apart because of it. It's okay to fall apart... because I figure in time you'll pull yourself back together. And if you don't, you can just wait for your adoring demon to come rescue you."

Now Aziraphale did laugh, a short suppressed little cough.

"I'm being completely honest here," Crowley answered serenely. "Because technically I was free about, oh... ninety minutes before you were."  
  
His angelic lover would have sat completely upright, were it not for Crowley's arm around his shoulders to keep him close. "Wait just a blessed minute – how actually _**did**_ you come to escape?!"

"Well let me start by saying that Michael's little slice of Limbo was this massive mountain range and they had me chained to the pinnacle of the highest granite bastard in there."

"Oh my..."

"And I **mean** chained up – wrists and ankles and even my neck, which kept me from simply turning snake to get out of it all. And it was forever mid-afternoon on an overcast day so no real sun and no stars, just constant boring light. And the wind! It was an endless screaming cacophony; I thought I was going mad."

"Dear Somebody!"

"Worse yet," he said, utterly solemn, "there was no turn-down service, and no complimentary mint on the pillows. In fact, there were no pillows."

Aziraphale chuckled, and Crowley smiled. Yes, they'd made it right again.

"But Michael had to be the worst part of it, for my money. They kept coming in there and asking snide little questions about you and me. Telling me that they'd watched everything we'd done these last few years, and had seen everything."  
  
"_**Everything?**_ Even that time that we--"

"Everything, angel. Even worse than the plants."

"So... what did you do?"

Crowley pointed at the little serpent tattoo descending from the right side of his hairline, just in front of his ear. "So you see this, right?"

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. "Only for about the last six millennia."

He turned his head down into the pillows between them, stirring the crimson hairs of his left side-burn with the same fingertip. "Look close," he prompted.

"What on Earth am I looking for, here-- wait. I think I see it. Is that a freckle, or a mole?" No, it couldn't be – Aziraphale had cataloged every single body-marking his lover had over two years ago. Moles didn't spring up out of nowhere, did they? He looked even closer. "Hold still, I--"

And the angel leaned in until his breath puffed against Crowley's cheek, his gaze narrowing. A narrow dark spot, maybe three millimeters long, if that...

… but it had little legs, six of them, and the last pair was very long.

It was a tiny flea tattoo.

"Oh. Oh my Somebody," moaned Aziraphale in adoration, amazement, disbelief – feeling the sensation of the epiphany rise all the way from his toes through his heart and into his brain, flooding all his senses like the best sorts of orgasms did.

"Crowley, _you grew an __**entirely new FORM!**_"

"Yeah, kinda," the demon answered softly.

"Don't you understand how amazing that is?! That's supposed to be _**impossible**_ for a demon!"

"Oh I know," he continued in that same small voice. "It was even harder than the last time."

Aziraphale lay back, utterly flummoxed. Crowley looked at him with sad and guileless golden eyes.

I'm not the only one who has a time span they've never really talked about, the angel thought.

He swallowed hard. "Start from the beginning... I'll listen."

Crowley pulled the blankets over his naked chest, cold in the desert night air, feeling more than vulnerable. Aziraphale lay less than an arm's length away and searched a hand under those duvets to find his lover's hand to hold.

"The thing about the Fall..." Crowley whispered. "The thing about it is... that time and space aren't really something you travel through, during it. They're there, and they happen to you, but it's different. The Fall isn't just a physical passage but also a mental, emotional, and spiritual journey of punishment. It warps you from the inside out...

"It's meant to.

"I never asked anyone else what they went through, on the way down. Nobody talks about it. I don't even know if all of them remember it, or remember it as well as I do. You're all alone while it happens. It hurts, but not so bad that you can't think at all. It hurts so much and so long, in fact, that you actually start to get a bit bored with it – and that's when the worst part begins.

"You start examining yourself; I don't know if you can help it. I felt like the Fall funneled me into myself, down inside my own soul to where my most awful truths waited for me. I who had been Jophiel – 'the Beauty of God' – discovered myself to be completely shallow, lacking real purpose, something of an air-head, overly reliant on my relative 'beauty' and everyone else's praise to give my existence meaning and direction. As if I devoured other angels' interest and good-will, trying to fill a hole in my psyche I'd never realized was there. I was a hanger-on, a parasite, a blood-sucker...

"I felt myself becoming a flea."

"Oh!" Aziraphale gasped.

"Yes, exactly," Crowley agreed. All the Fallen of the Infernal Host tended to have some sort of loathsome creature aspect to themselves: Beelzebub had her flies and Hastur his frog, for example. Even some of the New Ones developed animal aspects, everything from the bare hints like Dagon had of moray eel likeness up to full-on manifestations of fauna. And you could never quite be sure if some demons were human-shaped carrying symbiotic animal familiars – or if the demons actually _**were**_ the _**animals**_, telepathically piloting human meat-robot incarnations.

"But perhaps halfway through that I came to a decision, and the decision was this: bugger all that for a lark."

The angel grinned affectionately as he caressed his lover's cheek.

"I realized who I'd been as Jophiel; it was presented for me during the Fall so clearly it couldn't be denied. But I also realized that I didn't have to be that anymore if I didn't want to be. When I finally hit bottom I could become someone new, someone who didn't exist before.

"So I bent my will to becoming what I wanted to be: my own creature, larger than life. Sleek aesthetics, red and black and gold. If I would become horrible I would also still be beautiful, in my own way."  
  
"My _**dearest **_– you're magnificent, in any shape!"

"I fought for days, in Michael's mountain-side Purgatory, to get my original form back... but I realized early on it was only half the problem. I begged God to help me solve the other half."

"And did She?"

Crowley's wide mouth pressed tightly shut; his eyes filled with tears that overflowed onto his cheeks. Aziraphale was under the blankets with him in the next moment, drawing him close –

"She did!" Crowley sobbed. "She did, my love – and it was wonderful!"

And the demon pressed his heated face into his beloved seraph's chest, and felt the tears flow, and fought for control. Why are you crying? he thought to himself.

Because She **did** speak to me, he answered in the next moment – She **did** speak, just as I had prayed, and every word was the answer I needed, and every word was more proof that She still loves me.

She still loves _**me!**_

Crowley cried it out as Aziraphale stroked his hair and face and shoulders, vacillating between concern and rage – if the Almighty had said something... hurtful... or inappropriate to his demon, why... why! **Why**, he would give Her _**such**_ a talking-to, and that right quickly!

"No," the slim figure in his embrace protested, feeling the change in the angel's posture and knowing what it meant. "I promise, it was all good. It just... it just meant a lot."

"What on Earth did She **_say_**?"

He passed his palms over his streaming cheeks, and took a deep breath. "She said that Michael was right, and that I had to surrender – both to Michael and to that internal truth I had denied for so long."

Aziraphale opened his mouth to reply, then shut it, then opened it again to ask "And how was this a _**good**_ thing?"

Then Crowley was giggling, wet pupils the color of daffodils catching Aziraphale's gaze with eternal affection.

"Michael was right – about the strangest things. And entirely by accident, even. I don't know if they could intentionally tell the truth on pain of Falling, but they did so all over the place without meaning to.

"Michael was right when they said that God and love had brought me every step of my life to where I was, from the Fall to being captive there in their pocket-dimension. That's where I had to be to reconcile that last long lost part of myself. And when I came to where I could understand Michael, stop fighting them for just a moment, even find a way to let go of my rage at them – to _**forgive**_ them, in the truest sense of the word – I surrendered to them. Spiritually. Do you know what happens when you do that, beloved? Surrender to someone else, while inside their soul?"

Aziraphale shook his head, mystified.

"Make the sun rise for me, angel."

With barely a thought or intention, the dawn began to break behind Aziraphale's shoulder; it cast its golden rays perfectly over the curve of his neck to touch the golden scar on Crowley's chest.

"You gain a serious bit of control on the space around you, is what happens," the demon continued. "When I surrendered to Michael, the winds of their world answered my will. That was the second half of what I needed to be able to escape. Fleas can jump a long way... but only for a very small body comparatively.

"Michael was careful to stay out of what they thought was my reach while in chains. Once I changed form and was free I still had to stay on my Appearance to be able to pilot it convincingly when they came back. If I'd tried to jump into a head-wind or even through dead air I would have failed. Only with the winds roaring behind me, pushing me those extra thirty centimeters, did I have the power to make it across."

"Into their hair?" Aziraphale asked, with some justifiable viciousness.

"Only their lapels," he admitted. "But those same lapels were the perfect location for my new spy-post. Here I was thinking I'd have to leap to Gabriel's big stupid head and wait until the next time he felt like taking a jog in order to get back to Earth... but then Michael stepped into a stairwell to make a very angry phone call and who should they contact but the Lord of the Files and Master of Torments, Dagon themselves?"

The angel's eyes widened. "Then they met up. Dagon said something about you 'stirring tha kettle a mort fierce'."

"Well, Dagon was correct. And right about the time that Michael tried to snog them in the middle of St James's Park, I jumped onto _**their**_ lapels."

"And from theirs to mine, and from mine to here," finished Aziraphale. His brain did another lap. "Michael tried to _**snog**_** Dagon**? But why?!"

"Angels being attracted to demons – seems to be happening a lot lately. Maybe it's catching."

He leaned his forehead against Crowley's. "I find it simply impossible to believe that you're not the slightest bit jealous."

He felt the demon's answering grin, as it stretched nearly from ear to ear. "Ahh, my beloved... Tomorrow, if you need me to, I might pretend to be quite possessive and upset. I'll pitch a fit." His voice dropped to a whisper. "I might even... yell. Just a bit."

"And stomp your feet?" Aziraphale whispered back, his heartbeat accelerating.

"_**And**_ stomp my feet, and fling my arms open wide," his demon promised, his tones sinking into mellow, cajoling cadence. "Operatic protestations of hurt and betrayal. Arias of wounded loyalty, broken trust, et cetera."

"And that's when I might argue back everything you've said to me tonight, quite reasonably." He gasped as Crowley's slender hand found the one spot where his shirt had tugged loose from his trousers and infiltrated it.

"And I would cry sophistry, and ask in a very sardonic manner at what time did they start giving weasels halos."

"And I'd then lose my temper, and turn you over my knee.."

Crowley moaned when said knee parted his thighs. "And you'd put me back in my proper place," he purred.

He tore the top button of Aziraphale's trousers completely off – and neither of them cared.

"And then forgive you for your presumption..."

"We can do all that tomorrow, if we want. But for tonight..."

"Tonight," the angel agreed, and bound his mate's mouth in a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **So, my supporting notes first (in addition to what you've just read):**
> 
> **Seven Minutes in Hell:**  
Chapter 2 -- Aziraphale solves "missing his demon" during the 19th century with lots of sex and some self-destructive behavior.
> 
> Chapter 8 -- If Aziraphale and Crowley are "together", Aziraphale is able to orgasm. Aziraphale also theorizes that Crowley biting him might make it possible to communicate across dimensions.
> 
> **Seven Minutes of Eternity:**  
Chapter 4 -- Our favorite emotionally-constipated angel vows "Not now, no tears. Not a single tear until the day when we are one again," deliberately cutting off and spiritually repressing a ton of his own baggage and damage about the trauma of his kidnapping and of being temporarily apart from Crowley.
> 
> Chapters 5, 7, and 9 -- Crowley insists there is absolutely no way to truly separate him and Aziraphale, and this is borne out through multiple "echoes" between their thoughts, experiences, and environments in the text.
> 
> Chapter 8 -- Our favorite emotionally-constipated angel intentionally attempts to seduce his jailer, trying to get the upper hand and some manipulative leverage. Winds up having a handful of substandard orgasms and buying himself a ton of angst and regret.
> 
> I hope this chapter has helped clear up much more of his feelings, motivations, and consequences of those actions -- and Chapter 11 will have a few additional things that may grant him absolution.
> 
> **This chapter's notes:**
> 
> * "Would you have wanted to fuck them without talking with me first?" "Have you sought any of them out for sexual congress without letting me know?" Crowley is living that "swinging might be alright, we just need to talk about it first" life, hardcore.
> 
> * I can certainly see how falling in love with a human, with their exceedingly short life-spans, could be considered a "self-harming behavior". My beloved cat lived to be nearly 16 years old and I was still gutted when he passed away. It's rough, when your love outpaces your time.
> 
> * Moles don't spring up out of nowhere for members of either Ethereal or Infernal Host -- but if you find moles springing up on a mortal body, you should probably have them checked by a dermatologist because they could be cancerous. #themoreyouknow
> 
> * I gotta admit: I thought I telegraphed the secret of Crowley's second transformation harder than Alexander Graham Bell. First in Chapter 2 he talks about himself and Aziraphale being fleas (with a little flea Bentley even) -- and then after he's kidnapped, every time you see him appear to be beating himself down he is SPECIFICALLY trying to get back into his original form. Go back and check his wording.
> 
> * God said WHAT to my demon?! Oh well, about to go throw hands with the Almighty...
> 
> * Forgiveness in the true sense of the word means "I no longer allow your bullshit and toxicity to have a negative affect in my life. I choose to grow better and stronger and be a force for good, both for myself and others. I choose to leave you behind, and never let you hurt me ever again. My final goal is to feel nothing for you, except perhaps pity, and that only from a distance."
> 
> * Fleas jump 30 centimeters; the length of the average human arm is closer to 60ish. (I swear: I research the strangest shit.) He had to get a boost.
> 
> * One of the Big Results of our boys being separated and isolated for several days is that they've had to look at themselves, and each learn themselves in much the same way that they know each other. That's what thrills me about the last exchange in this chapter: "Here's how I am; here's how you are. We finally are starting to look at who we are ourselves with the same love and tolerance and compassion that we show to each other."
> 
> Next chapter: THE REUNION SEX WE'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR.


End file.
